


everything that drowns me makes me want to fly

by seventymilestobabylon



Series: Claims of the Crown Forgotten [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sam Needs A Hug, Suicidal Thoughts, that flip phone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-08-11 19:59:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 57,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7905688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventymilestobabylon/pseuds/seventymilestobabylon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve gets kidnapped. Sam wakes up Bucky to go find him. Nobody is fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. in which nobody is remotely fine

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to "Theory of Mind," but aside from a few minor references here and there, you can read this story without having read that one.

When he woke up, he remembered the asset first. He wouldn’t let the asset— He would stop this. Whatever they wanted to do he would fight it, kill them, kill himself, anything.

That was his first instinct.

Sam Wilson said, “Hey,” and Bucky Barnes remembered he was in Wakanda, and he put his head back and shut his eyes because the relief was more than he could take.

That was his second instinct.

Bucky Barnes had poor instincts and was not to be trusted. Because the next thing that happened was Sam opened his mouth and Bucky knew that his relief had been wrong. He said “Steve” the same time Sam did.

Sam nodded. “Yeah. He’s not dead.”

“Lead with that,” Bucky said weakly. “Next time.” He climbed out of the cryo chamber. It felt weird not to have the metal arm. Off balance.

“I led with it this time,” Sam said. “He’s missing and I’m worried. Talked to him two weeks back, he seemed happy as a clam, doing volunteer work with Nigerian folks displaced by Boko Haram. Said he was heading to New York next to update his vaccinations and figure out his passport.”

Bucky’s heart jolted at _vaccinations,_ but then he remembered, it wasn’t the same now. By now it was safer, and even if it weren’t, Steve was himself safer. “Why does he need vaccinations? We can’t carry infection.”

“Focusing on essentials, great,” said Sam, eyebrows raised. “He’s got a fake passport, he needs his shots to get the visas he wants.”

Steve got sick from the whooping cough shot. He didn’t get the shot when he was a little kid, cause he was too sick, so he was twelve when he finally went to the doctor and had it done. After that he was sick a whole week. _Seems like the cure’s worse than the disease,_ said Mrs. Rogers, trying to laugh. _Hope it takes._

Up to then, Bucky hadn’t known there was such a thing as medicine not taking. He thought doctors knew better than that.

When you were Steve’s friend, it was best to know that doctors were wrong sometimes and they lied and cheated you and gave you medicine that wasn’t anything more than fancy sugar water and didn’t listen, never listened, didn’t take him seriously.

“Hello?” said Sam.

Fuck. “I’m listening,” Bucky said, putting an edge of annoyance into his voice, like it was Sam’s fault for not continuing. His head was a noisy place. He couldn’t always pick out the most important thing and stick with it. “So—he didn’t make it to New York?”

“He was on the flight that arrived in New York, I checked on it,” said Sam. “But after that, nothing. I can’t get him on the phone. I called Stark, asked for—”

“You called Stark?” Bucky had to stop himself from hitting Sam. Don’t hit friends. Said Steve. Oh fuck, Steve. “He’s going to, he’s not, fuck, you can’t tell him what’s happening, he’s just gonna—”

Sam said, neutrally enough that Bucky honestly had no idea what he thought of it, “They’ve been talking. I thought Stark might have some idea what happened. He wasn’t—very helpful.”

“No shit he wasn’t helpful.”

Sam’s eyes crinkled, but all he said was, “If you need to piss before we leave, do it quick. I packed you a bag and we’re wheels up in an hour.”

Wheels up turned out to mean a Wakandan helicopter that dropped them off in Kampala, where Sam hired a car to take them to Entebbe International, where Bucky spent half an hour being poked at by security because his arm socket set off their metal detectors and Sam had to bribe them to hurry the process along so they wouldn’t miss their flight.

“When you said wheels up,” Bucky said, lengthening his stride to keep up with Sam.

“Can it, smartass.”

Because Bucky got distracted trying to snap his backpack’s chest buckle one-handed, Sam boarded first. He snagged the window seat and left the middle one for Bucky. They were flying economy. Like jets didn’t exist.

“I’m uncomfortable,” Bucky announced.

“Should’ve walked faster,” said Sam, who was reading a safety information brochure from the seatback pocket.

“T’Challa doesn’t have a _jet?_ ”

“T’Challa has lots of jets.” Sam folded the information brochure with the inside fold on top and put it back in the seat back.

“You folded it wrong. I don’t like flying in shitty _fucking_ airplanes.” At the corner of his eye, Bucky saw the guy sitting next to him scowl. He clenched his hand into a fist, unclenched it, and took his arm off the armrest. Immediately his seatmate put his arm there. Asshole. To Sam, Bucky said, “Why couldn’t we take one of T’Challa’s jets?”

Sam put his head down against the plane window. “Cause that shit’s military issue, man, and he’s done us enough favors. Plus he didn’t offer. If you don’t like the flights I booked, you can pay for ’em next time.”

No, he couldn’t. Bucky was shitty with money. The asset was never allowed to carry any. On long missions it had to steal what it needed: food and supplies only, never cash. It couldn’t be trusted with cash, it spent it wrong, or gave it away. If they found it with money, it was punished.

(Steve thought the same, though he didn’t say it. When they were together, Steve paid for everything, even vending machine snacks. Bucky wanted to ask how Steve thought he got by after Washington anyway, did he think he just went around stealing shit? But that probably was what Steve thought, and Bucky had stolen some things, when he had to, and he didn’t want to get in a fight about what constituted _had to,_ so he didn’t ask.)

“Flights?” said Bucky.

Sam’s head snapped up. He’d been falling asleep. “Huh?”

“Flights?”

“We still talking about the flights?” Sam said, rubbing his eyes.

“Flights?” Bucky said, again. The fingers of his human hand—only hand—dug into his neck. Too many fucking people, it made him antsy.

“You can keep saying the same thing over and over, but I’m not going to get any better at reading your mind.”

“It’s not direct?”

Sam angled himself towards Bucky so his whole torso could convey his disbelief at the question. “From Kampala to New York, you’re asking me if it’s direct.”

Bucky shrugged. People always tried to make him feel stupid for not knowing what the world was like. He was used to it, he didn’t care.

“No, it’s not direct,” said Sam. “We’re stopping in Addis Ababa, that’s in Ethiopia. Then Frankfurt, that’s in Germany.”

“I know where _Frankfurt_ is,” Bucky snapped.

Sam threw his hands up. “Okay, then. We’re done talking. Go the fuck to sleep and let me go to sleep. I’m tired. I just flew in and I’m tired, I want to rest.”

Obediently, Bucky shut his eyes and tilted his head back as far as he could with the seat upright. They were still taxiing for takeoff, and the cabin was uncomfortably warm. The guy next to Bucky was obviously going to hog the armrest the whole time but it was okay. Sometimes people on planes were assholes. People could be assholes and not be planning to attack you.

With his eyes closed, it got way harder not to think about Steve. Who would have taken him? (Anyone. Literally fucking anyone. He didn’t have anyone watching his six, and he took stupid risks, always had, that was Steve.) And of course because Sam was stupid the same way Steve was stupid and trusted everyone, he’d basically told Stark they were coming.

Bucky was off-balance without the arm. He hated it and he needed it.

Fucking Tony Stark.

He didn’t want to sleep. It wasn’t fair for Sam to make him. He wasn’t tired, he’d _been_ sleeping, he’d slept out the better part of seventy years. Like when he was a kid and his mom made him put on a sweater because _she_ was cold.

The guy next to Bucky shifted in his seat and elbowed Bucky in the ribs. Bucky made himself hold still. He was supposed to be still, supposed to be sleeping.

Go to sleep, go to sleep.

Go to sleep.

But he couldn’t.

* * *

Sam exchanged some money in Addis Ababa, and they had tibs for breakfast. Bucky carefully ate half and stared at what was left on the plate for so long that Sam laughed and asked if he should get another order.

“If you’re still hungry,” said Bucky.

“Are _you_ still hungry?”

Bucky said he wasn’t. The airport exchange rate was bad, and Bucky didn’t have his arm and he wasn’t the mission asset that he ordinarily would be.

On the flight to Frankfurt, he didn’t talk to Sam. This time Sam let him have the window seat, and Bucky slumped down as low as the seat would let him and thought about weaknesses in the Iron Man suit. The problem in Russia was he was trying to get away, not trying to fight. Fucking Steve said run and he ran and that was how come Stark got his arm off and left him—

(don’t)

“It doesn’t matter, Buck,” Steve kept saying afterward. Doesn’t matter, Buck. I don’t care. Anything for you, of course you’re worth it, you’re my best friend, and Sam had said “Hey,” trying to lighten the tension by playing offended.

It did matter. Steve always thought he knew better than Bucky. Ever since the Winter Soldier, even before that. Since the serum.

In Wakanda, Steve had said wearily, “Why are you always mad at me?”

“I’m not mad at you,” Bucky said.

Once Steve would have fought him on that. After the serum, he had. Now he was too scared, and Bucky wasn’t sure if he was scared of him or for him. Both were bad.

Sam was asleep when the stewardess brought around food, so Bucky ate both of their meals and all of Sam’s snacks. Too bad if Sam wanted it. If he wanted it he should’ve stayed awake or told Bucky specifically not to eat it. Or gotten enough food at the airport. Not like this was the first time he’d ever encountered a supersoldier metabolism.

* * *

Their layover in Frankfurt was six hours. It turned out the airport had had a bomb scare the previous week so there were men with guns walking around, grim-faced. Bucky hated Germany. The asset had hated it too. The first time Pierce sent it to the newly reunified Germany, he hadn’t told it that the Berlin Wall had come down. As a joke. The asset thought it had been dropped in the wrong place and lost three hours figuring out what was going on. Then it missed the rendezvous with its contact and it wasn’t so funny anymore.

The taste of German in his mouth made him think of things that—

“Hey,” he whispered to Sam, who was reading a newspaper he’d picked up for free at their gate when they were disembarking. “Wanna play a game?”

Sam looked at him like he was nuts. “What, like Hangman?”

“No, let’s do, we’re setting a bomb and we have to disable the security and then—”

“Wow,” said Sam. “No. Please don’t talk about b-o-m-b-esses when we’re in the middle of an airport, okay? That kind of thing tends to make people twitchy.”

Bucky sighed and pounded at his hip with his fist for a second. “Okay, okay, the game can be defusing it. Okay? Instead. And, but, all the security guys are in on it, so we gotta take ’em out quiet until we can figure out where the—the package is. Okay?”

Sam looked at him for another minute, stone-faced, and Bucky thought maybe his forehead would relax and he’d smile and play along. But he said, “This shit ain’t a game. I didn’t wake up your sorry ass so you could dick around with BPOL, you get that? I came get you because—”

“I’m not saying we really do it!” Bucky said.

Too late, he realized he’d shouted. People were looking. Sam thought he was crazy and unstable, and now so did everyone at the gate. Bucky wanted to go to the food court, but he didn’t have any money, and Sam wasn’t hungry (even though he’d slept through lunch and dinner, what the hell).

“Quit shouting,” said Sam. Unnecessarily. Bucky wasn’t stupid. He’d already noticed, he wasn’t stupid.

Softer, Bucky said, “I wasn’t saying really do it. That’s why it’s a game. We’d have to get access to one of the executive lounges, right, to dump the bodies, and we could set up interrogations in the showers too. Drown ‘em out with the water? You any good at picking pockets?”

Sam folded up his paper and thwacked it down on the table between them. He leaned over his armrest and said, “Listen. I’m tired. I don’t have time for this kind of shit. Either shut up or take a walk and think about this somewhere else.”

Fuck you.

I’m not actually trying to attack airport security. Wouldn’t even be fun to attack airport security. Shooting fish in a barrel.

This airport’s fucking boring and you booked us the longest flight in the world and if you gave an actual damn about Steve and his safety you’d have begged or borrowed or goddamn stolen a jet from T’Challa, because every fucking second we sit here—

Bucky exploded out of his shitty, uncomfortable chair. They weren’t even chairs, they were those shitty plastic-and-metal rows of things that kind of looked like chairs so everyone pretended that’s what they were cause this fucking century, this goddamn millennium, was just one mass fucking hallucination.

And there wasn’t anywhere to walk _to_ in an airport. Just people staring at him because of his arm. And people in airports walked slow. Bucky’s body fell naturally into walking like in New York, fast on the left, slow on the right, but travelers were stupid and dumb and they didn’t pay attention. They’d stop suddenly to jabber to each other in German and French and Portuguese and Arabic, forcing people to swerve around their kids.

Bucky swerved around a kid who’d stopped to check something on her backpack, and a fast-walking man in a suit shoved his shoulder and hissed _Scheisskerl_ at him. Bucky put out his left hand to steady himself, but he didn’t have a left hand anymore so he fell. He curved his shoulders to drop and roll, but he was in public and regular people didn’t fall like that, so he aborted the motion, and then it was too late to catch himself any other way. His nose and chin and right knee bashed and scraped on the scraggy airport carpet.

“Fuck!” he yelled. The mother of the kid with the backpack glared at him, like it wasn’t her kid’s fucking fault in the first place.

His nose bled a lot. People kept coming to check on him, even after he stood up and backed up against a window and scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. One of the checkout clerks from the coffee shop across the way. An American family who wouldn’t leave him alone until he swore at them. Two security officers, because they saw the missing arm and thought he was a fellow soldier.

(Ironically, it would have been the perfect opportunity to separate one of them out from the pack for interrogation. If they had set a bomb, and it was Bucky’s job to find it.)

More to escape the attention than anything else, he went to the bathroom and got a wad of paper towels to hold under his nose. On the way back to his gate, he swiped an unopened sandwich out of someone’s tote bag. He was hungry.

Back at the gate, Sam had fallen asleep again. Great. So anyone could just walk away with their shit. Bucky kicked his ankle irritably as he sat down, and Sam came awake in a hard jolt that made Bucky’s stomach ache with familiarity. It was a hard thing to shake, that jolt. The asset—

(don’t)

“Hey,” said Sam. “What’d you—” He blinked a couple of times. “Are you bleeding?”

Bucky shrugged. Before Sam could ask if he’d been in a fight, he said, “I fell. It was dumb. I just fell.”

“Oh.” Sam drew a hand across his mouth. He looked awful, now that Bucky stopped to pay attention. Tired and drawn, not up to a fight, if they had to. “Are, um. Are you okay?”

“I just fell,” Bucky repeated.

“You’ve got blood.” Sam drew his hand over his mouth again, to show him where, and Bucky felt stupid for not realizing that was what he had been trying to indicate to Bucky the first time. Not meeting Sam’s eyes, he swiped his water bottle, poured a little on his wad of paper towels, and scrubbed them across his face.

“Got it?” he asked.

“Yeah. Shit. Sorry. I fell asleep with all our stuff, that was—pretty dumb.”

“The wings’re still in your backpack,” Bucky said, leaning over to say it quietly.

“Yeah? You checked? Trying to steal my shit, Barnes?”

Bucky laughed, and Sam’s face relaxed a little, too. “The bulk,” Bucky explained. “Same as when I left. Asshole.”

“Everybody’s jealous cause I’m the only one with wings,” Sam said, stretching his arms up and out. The motion reminded Bucky of something. He couldn’t put his finger on it. A good memory, from before. A James Buchanan Barnes thing.

“Want this?” he said, before he could think about it, waving his sandwich at Sam.

“You’re not hungry?”

“I ate your food on the plane.”

Sam really did smile then, which made his face look sort of okay, and he took the sandwich. The flight from Frankfurt to New York would be a long one and Bucky could eat then. And the sandwich had avocado in it, so he didn’t even want it; Bucky didn’t get why everyone in this millennium went nuts for avocado considering it tasted like slimy nothing.

* * *

When they got to New York, Sam went to see Stark, and Bucky hunkered down in a corner of their hotel room and tried not to think.

* * *

Stark told Sam, “Rogers isn’t missing, he’s just chickening out. Trust me.”

“Fuck that,” said Bucky, when Sam relayed this to him. “Stark doesn’t care if he’s dead, he would have fucking killed him if—”

(don’t, don’t, don’t)

His fingers felt cramped.

“Well,” Sam said. “You remember me saying they’ve been talking?”

Bucky wanted to break a window. Yes, he remembered. He was not so fucking broken, his mind was not so damaged, that he couldn’t remember a conversation from the previous day. Steve talked to him this way too. He shrugged.

“Okay, well, yeah. Stark thinks Steve got upset with him for something he said and just, I guess, blew town. Which, considering it’s Stark—”

“Or he has him stashed in a fucking lab somewhere and he’s fucking—” Bucky snapped his mouth shut so hard his teeth clicked. He couldn’t think about that, he couldn’t think of Steve on a table somewhere—

Sam’s face changed, and he said gently, “You good?”

Impatient, Bucky hissed between his teeth. “Just, we gotta check up on Stark first. Get into his tower, that’s the number-one thing, see if we can find clues where he mighta— Would he give you access? Like if you were visiting—”

Sam reached out and put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, the metal side. Bucky shoved him away. His hand hurt, his fingers. Jaw, too.

“Okay,” said Sam. His voice was very measured. “Sorry, I won’t touch without permission, it’s good you made that clear to me. That’s good, okay?”

“Shut up,” Bucky snapped. “You didn’t answer my—”

“Do this,” said Sam. “Real quick. Cause you’re stressing me out, buddy. Take two deep breaths in and out. I’ll answer while you’re doing that. Sound good?”

Bucky glowered at Sam and sucked in a breath.

“Okay,” said Sam. “Good. Thanks. Now, I’m hearing you say you’re worried that Stark’s the one who’s responsible for Steve disappearing. I get that, cause last time you saw him was rough for you, and that’s okay to feel that way.”

Still holding his breath, Bucky rolled his hand in a circle to show that he wanted Sam to get on with it. He didn’t need fucking permission to think what he thought.

“Don’t hold your breath. I said in and out. Okay, where I’m worried is that Steve trusted Stark enough to make plans to see him, and—”

“Steve trusts _everybody!_ He—” Sam cocked an eyebrow, and Bucky scowled and did another deep breath in. It didn’t make him feel better. He didn’t feel bad in the first place. Everyone thought they knew what was best for him.

“And,” said Sam, pointed, “if we spend the next three weeks planning a big heist on Stark’s mansion, we’ll probably still get caught, he’ll have a reason to rat us out to the feds for using forged passports, and if it isn’t Stark—do one more for me—that’s three more weeks’ head start the real bad guys’ll have on us.”

He was right, dammit. Bucky exhaled loudly. “Least Stark’s a lead. Not like _you_ have any leads.”

Sam rolled a shoulder, shaking out the kinks. “Neither do you. Guess the tactical genius thing didn’t come out of the super soldier serum tube.”

“Fuck you,” said Bucky, without heat. “You tell Stark about me?”

“No.”

“He ask?”

Sam shut his eyes for a second. “He—yeah. He asked. He’s making—”

“I don’t care! I don’t care about Stark. I don’t care. Just wanted to know if I gotta spend half my time watching my back while we’re looking for Steve. What else did he say when you talked to him?”

“Stark?”

“Steve! Fuck! Who are we trying to—Steve!” Bucky wrapped his arm tight around his torso, so he wouldn’t use it to punch Sam.

“Tell you what,” said Sam, his voice cool. “I’mma get some ice. When I get back here, you can tell me two places you think Steve’d visit if he came to New York, and you can not raise your voice to me when you do it. How about that?”

Bucky hadn’t raised his voice. He _hadn’t,_ but Sam was already out the door.

He didn’t know any places Steve would go. He didn’t know Steve, not this Steve, and not even, fuck, he couldn’t even say he knew the old one. There was so much missing from his head, memories that Steve would throw his way and Bucky would he pretend he knew about them too. After a while, reading through his notebook (the old one, lost now, didn’t matter), he wasn’t sure what memories were real and what he’d reconstructed in his own head because Steve wanted so badly for him to remember: The smell of gingerbread when Mrs. Rogers was still alive. Trying to finish a jigsaw puzzle before the last of the light went.

Remembering crummy things was always easier. Bitch of a world he’d woken up to.

Mrs. Rogers. Her grave. That was where.

* * *

They split up to do the graves, because Sam pointed out that if Steve was visiting graves, he’d stop by Peg’s as well. Bucky got to choose which one he wanted to visit. He picked Holy Cross, even though it was farther away from the hotel which meant no time to sneak back around and scope out Tony Stark’s tower because he hadn’t forgotten that the last person to talk to Steve was almost certainly Tony Stark—

Anyway, he chose Mrs. Rogers because there was nobody else to remember her but him and Steve, and Bucky barely remembered her anyway and it wasn’t right. And he didn’t want to think about Peggy Carter dead in a box. At least with Mrs. Rogers, he’d had time to get used to it. Eighty years, almost. So what if he hadn’t lived through all of them.

Nothing about Holy Cross looked familiar. How could he remember the name, and not the place? Did Steve not let him come along to the gravesite, when he visited his mother?

Maybe James Buchanan Barnes had his own gravesite visits to pay. Bucky couldn’t remember where his parents were buried, and that wasn’t right either. He should’ve asked Steve. Steve would’ve died of joy if Bucky had asked that. He’d have gone with Bucky to buy flowers for the graves.

Sometime back, James Buchanan Barnes must’ve come to this grave, because Bucky’s feet carried him right to it. _Sarah Rogers. Cherished wife, beloved mother._ When Bucky and Steve came in wet with mud and laughing so hard they had to cling to each other to keep upright, she’d smile at Bucky like he’d given her the moon.

She called him “scamp.”

There were no flowers on the grave. Steve hadn’t been there, or he’d been there long enough ago that the groundskeeper had cleared them away already.

It wasn’t right.

If he had an armful of flowers (somewhere nearby must sell flowers), then when he went to talk to the groundskeeper, they’d trust him. More. And he could leave them at the gravesite afterward. He should’ve made Sam do both cemeteries. Selfish to come to Mrs. Rogers’s grave alone, knowing that he looked like a weapon, dangerous, trouble, nobody whose questions you’d want to answer. Just so he could remember her eyes, blue like Steve’s, sad in the same way (but she was always glad to see Bucky).

She called him scamp, and smiled with crooked teeth.

Fucking _selfish. ___

The sound of his phone ringing—Sam had gotten him a burner—jolted him so badly that he dropped to a crouch. A family twenty yards away heard it and glanced over, angry with him for disturbing the quiet of the graveyard. Clumsy, he fished the phone out and answered it. 

Sam said, “I got something.” 

* * *

He was standing in the middle of a desert of ice, white as far as he could see. 

He was strapped into a chair, blindfolded, restrained by his arms and legs, while people spoke indistinctly around him.

__Both of these things were true at once, which meant he was mentally compromised. Ordinarily he would think, would be sure, that the ice was the untrue thing. (He dreamt of ice, often.) But the restraints were leather; he could twist his fingers back far enough to feel them on his wrists. He could break leather, thicker than this, easily, but he was struggling and he was not free of these restraints. So then what?_ _

__He was cold. Cold to the bones of him._ _

__“Where!” shouted one of the voices. A woman._ _

__“He’s coming in and out. I think we went too far.” This one was a man’s voice, lightly accented._ _

__The last thing he remembered: He was hunched over, hiding behind something, why would he hide? He couldn’t remember why. Trying to get a message back to the Avengers. He was slow at texting. If he had one of Tony’s fancy phones he could have whispered to it, not bothered with punching buttons. Why hadn’t he ever asked Tony for one, why hadn’t—_ _

__You couldn’t ask for favors from a man you had left broken and bloody and grieving and alone at an abandoned Hydra base in the middle of Russia._ _

__Even if—_ _

__You couldn’t ask for favors._ _

__The ice was gone. His stomach heaved, and he vomited painfully. Three people (he was pretty sure he’d heard three, and three was okay, he could take three) made noises of disgust. “Call Anders, have him clean him up,” said one of them._ _

__(Okay, four. He could take four.)_ _

__Someone patted his cheek, open-palmed. “Hang in there, Cap,” he said. A smoker’s voice, husky._ _

__He said, “Go to hell,” and spit out a gob of bile._ _

__Here was a question. If you left someone broken and bloody and grieving and alone at an abandoned Hydra base in the middle of Russia. If you did it because you had to, because it was the only way to stop him from killing the person who wore the same face as the man who killed his mother. If you had to because it was Bucky, but also because if he succeeded, he would look back later and wish it undone, and you were the only one who could give him that._ _

__Wait, there was more to the question._ _

__If you sent a helicopter, after. So he wouldn’t be stranded._ _

__If you sent a phone, and it took three tries before he didn’t hang up on you._ _

__If he called you pumpkin and asked when you were coming by. If, daring, you said, asked—_ _

__(His mouth tasted like vomit, but better that than ice.)_ _

__Would he still come after you, then?_ _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam learns more about Bucky’s job skills, and vice versa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully posting the 2nd chapter will make me get my ass in gear and write the rest of this thing ALL FEELINGS ALL THE TIME NONSTOP FEELINGSPALOOZA

“Monday,” said Sam. “Three guys, one black, two white, and a white lady. They were leaving out of here with a big blond guy the groundskeeper thinks could’ve been Steve, carrying him. Said it was the lady’s husband and he’d been sick lately anyway and just passed out in the graveyard.”

Bucky nodded. If he pretended it was just another mission briefing, he’d be okay. Carrying him. Fuck. “He see a vehicle?”

“Wasn’t him on duty. The guy who was there comes on at four, said we could come back this afternoon and talk to him about it.”

“Who are our covers?”

Sam cocked his head questioningly.

“What?” said Bucky.

“Nah, nothing. Freaks me out when you act all normal and helpful.”

“Shithead.”

Sam grinned at him briefly, with that aggravating gap he had between his teeth, and went on with the briefing. “Thinks we’re vets—”

“We are vets,” Bucky pointed out, just to be a jerk.

“Normal vets. I said Afghanistan. Didn’t say PJ, I figured that’s gonna be—yeah, Afghanistan’s what I went with.”

Bucky didn’t know what _PJ_ meant. In this world, this century, he ran into a lot that he didn’t recognize. He got tired of it. He didn’t ask about PJ, that wasn’t their cover, and it didn’t matter. “And Steve’s supposed to be, what, our—”

“Friend,” said Sam. “Think you can remember that?”

“Fuck off.”

“Aight, get in.” Sam grabbed his blue and white coffee cup off the top of the rental car and swung himself into the driver’s seat. “Buckle up, huh?”

“Don’t have to,” Bucky pointed out. Supersoldier.

“You do when I’m driving,” said Sam. “My car, my rules.”

Fuckin’ Sam Wilson.

“Told him Steve’s got a drug problem,” Sam added, putting the car into gear. Bucky snorted. Try to imagine Steve damn Rogers putting unclean shit into his body.

Don’t. God, fuck, don’t try to imagine that. Bucky glanced over at Sam, who was shifting his rearview slightly, and carefully steadied his breathing. In, out. When he remembered to be, Bucky was good at looking like nothing was wrong.

Afghanistan, veterans, drug problem. He could do that. He’d said Afghanistan before to people, after he’d left Hydra, before Steve found him. Back when he still had an arm. It wasn’t the missing arm, or not just, that made people clutch their purses. Bucky didn’t know what it was. Something about him said _Watch out for this one,_ like the markings on a venomous snake. Except he couldn’t figure what it was, whatever the marks on him were that everyone else could see. Once he figured it out, what he was doing, what scared people, he’d stop. Make everything easier.

Sam was talking. Bucky was supposed to have been listening. He made a noncommittal noise, to cover. When a person didn’t listen there were consequences.

“Barnes,” said Sam, and he leaned over slightly, arms reaching.

Bucky flinched. Didn’t mean to. Flinching always made things worse, showing them you were scared. He knew better. Living the easy life too long, putting himself into cryo. That was how a man, a weapon, lost its edge, developed bad habits.

Sam drew back quickly. “I’m not gonna hit you, man. I was gonna plug my phone—I’m not gonna _hit_ you.”

“Light’s green,” said Bucky, low.

He hated driving in New York City. Faster to get out and walk. Faster to go across roofs, but he couldn’t do that, couldn’t trust his balance without the arm, and anyway Sam wouldn’t be able to keep up.

“ _Barnes._ You listening to me?”

Trying to. “Say something worth listening to and we’ll see,” said Bucky. Sam liked it when he was a smartass. Easy to do now, with Steve not here, Steve who would look anxiously at Sam, and anxiously at Bucky, crease between his eyes; and Bucky could never tell if that meant he was being too much like his old self, the person Steve remembered, or not enough.

Sam put on his blinker and turned.

“You drive like an old lady,” said Bucky.

“Saving it for the air, my friend.”

Bucky was jealous of Sam’s wings. If he could fly, he could never be trapped. “M’not scared of you,” he said.

“I know,” said Sam, easy.

“I’m not,” Bucky insisted. Ever since he’d met Sam—met him properly, not counting the time he’d ripped his wings off and thrown him off a helicarrier—Sam had been kind of astonishingly not scared of Bucky. He’d be alone with him. Nobody liked being alone with Bucky. Even Steve avoided it, although not for quite the same reasons as most of the world. (Or at least, not just those reasons.) The least Bucky could do, he figured, was not be scared of Sam back.

“I know,” Sam said, driving the speed limit.

Bucky sighed. “You drive like an old lady.”

“You already said that.”

Had he? Fuck. What a piece of shit brain he had, this remnant of Bucky Barnes that he was stuck being. Couldn’t pay attention long enough to carry on a conversation, couldn’t remember two minutes ago what he’d said, acted like a whipped dog when a man reached over to open the glove compartment. He swallowed hard and looked out the window.

“It’s old reactions, junk reflexes,” said Sam.

“Huh?”

“From before,” Sam said patiently. “Your body responds to what it’s used to experiencing—someone reaches over without saying why, you’re used to that being bad, right? It’s a reflex. That’s normal when folks get back from active duty, shit like that. I know you’re not scared of me.”

Normal. Bucky tipped his head down and laughed quietly.

“What?” said Sam.

Normal. “Like I’m going to be scared of some skinny pilot.”

“Punk,” Sam said.

Peg was buried at Cypress Hills, next to her husband. If it wasn’t for her, and Howard Stark who Bucky had killed, he’d never have gotten free. Steve wouldn’t’ve been able to find out where he was, get to him, save him. (Resent him, break his heart, drop him from a train and never look back.)

(Fucking monster, fucking animal to blame Steve for any of that, for anything. Steve who was missing. Steve who had given up his whole world for Bucky.)

The groundskeeper smiled at Sam like they were old friends and made an effort to be polite to Bucky too, though his eyes kept darting to Bucky’s shoulder and then, rapidly, up to his face. He introduced himself, but Bucky forgot his name right away. They met the night guy, the one who’d seen Steve. His name was Jameel.

“Jameel,” Bucky said, and he shook his hand and smiled at him. James Buchanan Barnes smile, because they needed him on their side. “You saw our friends, I heard?”

“Big tall guy,” Jameel suggested.

“Stupid tall,” Bucky agreed. “Lot to pour into a taxi, that guy.”

Jameel chuckled. “I got one like that.”

“He into heavier stuff, your guy?” Bucky asked, a little lower, sad. “My buddy—” Shit, he forgot to ask what Steve’s name was supposed to be. “He’s getting mixed up with some people he shouldn’t be. Getting into bad shit. We’re tryna get him some help.”

Sam had a face on him like he’d never heard a lie before in his life. As Jameel considered, Bucky shot a quick scowl Sam’s way.

“He looked bad,” said Jameel. “Slurring.”

“We just want to know he’s okay,” said Bucky, soft and urgent. The asset had been good at this part, playing human until it got what it needed. “Anything you could do to help us find him. He’s my best—hell.”

He let his voice catch. Jameel was buying it, the groundskeeper too. The only way it could’ve been better, worked better, would’ve been if Bucky’d thought to wear dog tags. Sad veteran. Just wanting to find his friend.

Jameel’s face resolved into certainty. “Sure, man, I could help out. They put him into a car. Kinda rough with him, you know?”

Bucky carefully didn’t look at Sam.

“Red Hyundai, Maine plates. Didn’t get a number—sorry, man, you know what, I knew something wasn’t right about it, and I shoulda said something. Shoulda stopped ‘em, asked some questions.”

 _Yeah you fucking should’ve._ In the old days the asset would have killed them both now, the two witnesses. It had permission to leave bodies in its wake. Didn’t matter what questions got asked. By the time the corpses were found, if they ever were, the asset would be back in cryo, nothing to trace. Bucky closed his hand into a fist.

“Nah, man,” Sam was saying. “How were you going to know? Anything else you can remember about ‘em?”

Jameel bunched up his mouth. If Bucky hit him right now, it would break his jaw.

“Know what,” Jameel said. “They went to the gas station after. I remember ’cause they peeled outta here real fast, but then pulled right into the Shell station. Like, you could drive a little slower, bro, you’re just going to the gas station.”

Bucky was already halfway back to the cemetery gate when Jameel finished his sentence, back to the car and considering ways to pick the lock by the time Sam jogged to catch up with him. He said to Sam, “That fuck.”

“You did real good,” said Sam. “C’mon, we’ll walk over.”

Bucky’s mind caught on _did real good,_ and on the surprise in Sam’s voice. He was torn between feeling flattered and annoyed, like did Sam honestly think the asset— It wasn’t worth getting in a fight over. “Fucker sees a guy carried out of a _graveyard._.”

“He didn’t know.”

Bucky clenched his jaw to stop himself from answering. Didn’t know what? Didn’t know to ask questions when he saw an unconscious man being manhandled by a group of thugs? Everyone knew that. If you saw someone in trouble you helped. That’s what Steve would have done, that’s who Steve was. Long before he was Captain America. And this was the fucking thanks he got, and James Buchanan _fucking_ Barnes wasn’t there to save him.

The Shell station had a buzzer on the door. Nowadays they had buzzers, not bells. Bucky didn’t startle noticeably at the noise, and he was proud of that for a second until he looked right. On his right was a glass barrier behind which the cashier was ringing up purchases, and Bucky’s mind fractured dangerously.

He looked up, and—

_Don’t bullshit me, Rogers._

Bucky looked up. Had his eyes in the wrong place. He thought the enemy would be a sweet-faced man with chubby cheeks, a man who stood behind glass too thick to break and who knew how to make the asset submit.

He looked up instead of—

He looked up.

“You’re here,” said a voice, too close to his head.

Bucky’s arm hurt so fucking much. Incapacitated, weak, broken, _fuck._ “Please don’t,” he whispered. Or he shouted. It didn’t matter. What he thought, what he wanted, what he said had never been the point.

Fingers around his wrist. He didn’t fight. He was tired.

“Feel that? Bucky. Hey! Sergeant.”

Bucky snapped to attention, fought his eyes back into focus. A face hovered in front of him, and it took long seconds for him to register it as familiar. Steve’s friend. The one who could fly. Bucky said, “Is he dead?”

“You know where you are?” said the bird.

Person, not bird. Wilson, Steve’s friend who could fly. Sam. They were in the parking lot of a gas station. They were finding Steve, chasing Steve. He tried to say some of that aloud.

Sam let out a breath, and the air tickled Bucky’s face. “Hey. Bucky. You with me?”

“Yes,” said Bucky, defensive.

“Remembering something bad?”

Bucky shoved at Sam’s arms. Since Sam was crouched down next to Bucky, he went over backwards onto his ass, caught himself on his right hand, and shot Bucky a dirty look. Bucky gave it back to him just as dirty. “You don’t know anything about me,” he spat.

“I’m trying to goddamn help you!” yelled Sam.

It helped, Sam yelling. Somehow it helped, it reminded Bucky that they were here and it was now and he hadn’t yet missed—God, let him not have missed—his chance to save Steve. The two of them got to their feet, brushing off gravel and dirt and fuck knew what else. New York.

Not yelling anymore, but not quiet either, Sam said, “Stay the fuck here. I’m going back in to see if they’ll still help us out. Jesus Christ.”

The brick of the building was cold against Bucky’s back. How had he gotten outside? He didn’t want to investigate the question too closely, for fear that he would be thrown back to Russia in his mind, lying helpless while red and gold metal beat Steve to death.

I’m trying to help you. Like he needed help from Sam Wilson, Steve’s replacement best friend. Shitty arrogant pilot with know-it-all eyes. Teach a man to fly and he thought he owned the world. Howard Stark had been like that, too. Bucky had never liked owing his life to that fuck, still less Steve’s.

He should write that down. That memory. Only what if he got a new notebook and then they found Steve and Steve read it? Steve thought anything Bucky had belonged to him, because he thought Bucky belonged to him. If Bucky wrote down _I was pissed Howard Stark saved me,_ Steve would read it, Steve would turn sorrowful blue eyes on him and he would say, _Howard Stark was a good man, Buck._

Bad damn judge of character.

Bucky wished he could remember how he, James Buchanan Barnes, ever gotten anything done. In the old days, he hadn’t questioned every move he made, every thought he had. How had he done that?

“Hey,” said Sam’s voice, so Bucky opened his eyes.

“Hey. Did they.”

“Got ‘em on tape.”

Bucky shivered. “Can they give us a copy?”

“Nope,” said Sam. “Not authorized. They let me take pictures with my phone, but you can’t see much. The lady and one of the white guys came in and paid cash for the gas.”

“Buy anything else?”

“They didn’t remember. Can’t tell on the tape, the angle’s bad for it.”

“Aw, come on,” said Bucky, “you gotta get them to check their receipts, they keep all that shit for—”

Sam made a clicking noise with his tongue. “You wanna go back in and interrogate them?”

Bucky unfocused his eyes, not to see the glass in the gas station, the glass in Berlin, the glass in Russia, and Sam kept talking.

“They had a partial on the license. D, five, one, Maine plates like your boy Jameel said. So that’s something. I know a guy just retired from the NYPD, I’ll give him a call, see if he can find someone to chase down names and addresses for us.”

D, five, one. Maine plates. “Can I see the picture of the car?”

Sam fished his phone out of his pocket and showed Bucky the picture. He was right: You couldn’t see much. Even D, five, one was fuzzy. The rear window had a white splotch on it that might have been static on the videotape but wasn’t. “Barcode on the back window. It’s a rental.”

“Yeah?”

Too much hope in Sam’s voice. Just because Steve had been alive Monday didn’t mean he was alive today. A lot could happen in five days. Bucky swallowed hard and headed back to the car, to stop himself from saying that to Sam. One of them thinking worst-case scenario was enough.

* * *

Two hours later, two hours in which Sam went to a diner on 8th Ave for lunch and Bucky curled up in the backseat of Sam’s car and told himself it wouldn’t help to go back to the cemetery and hurt people, Sam’s buddy got back to them. The rental place wouldn’t give out a name, but a rental car with the right make and model and the right partial plates had just been returned to the same place it was rented, an Avis in a town called Budapest, in central Maine.

“They get a new car?” Bucky asked.

Sam looked at him sideways. “Nah,” he said into the phone. “That’s my— Yeah. He says did they get a new car, when they returned—Yeah.” Pause, pause. To Bucky: “Doesn’t know.”

Nobody ever knew any damn thing.

But it was something, and they got on the road right after. Sam drove. It was the worst time to leave the city, six-thirty, or maybe there was no good time to leave the city. They crept along, what felt like inches at a time, amongst a sleepy symphony of honking horns all around them. Cars changing lanes. Sam slouched down in his seat, wrist on the wheel, fingers dangling.

Bucky was starving. It was stupid not to get food before they left, if they were going to be on the road all night. Now they’d have to stop, and it would slow them up, getting off the interstate and back on again. Sam ate lunch, so maybe they wouldn’t have to stop for dinner. Did regular people always have all three meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, like in magazines? Or not? It was a question Bucky hadn’t had to consider since—well. Ever. Back in Brooklyn, you ate when you had food, and you were hungry when you didn’t.

“Gonna be here a while,” said Sam, interrupting Bucky’s train of thought.

Bucky shrugged.

“Doesn’t bother you?” said Sam.

“No point bellyaching about it.”

“Oh man,” Sam said. “Bellyaching. You and Steve, I swear to God.” When he said _God,_ he sounded so much like New York that—

Memories like that, you couldn’t write down. Small familiarities, the vowel in the word _God._ But it felt good to have them, anyway.

“What’s the matter?” Bucky said, a little expansive. “What, it’s only fun driving like my gran if everybody else around you’s going the speed limit? Slow everyone else down to your perfect speed of two miles an hour and you allasudden get tetchy?”

“Your gran do a lot of driving these days?”

Bucky smirked and doffed his baseball cap. “God rest her,” he said. “Died of the flu after the Great War.”

“Oh, so she _never_ drove, s’what you’re saying.”

Nothing changed—not Sam, not the car, not the scene out the window—but the good feeling Bucky had had, the connection to his old self, dissipated as fast as it had come. Bucky knew that his next move was supposed to be another insult to Sam’s driving, but the effort of formulating another jab, and the one that would come after that, and the next one after, felt abruptly impossible. He muttered, “Yeah,” and turned his face back to the window.

Sam looked at him, longer than Bucky wanted. He felt it in his peripheral vision, but he didn’t look back. If he met Sam’s eyes, Sam would—something. Apologize. Make another joke. And Bucky would have to—something else, and he didn’t have anything else in him.

Useless.

Sam’s phone talked to them while they drove, the only sound inside the car for a while. The phone had a woman’s voice. Bucky felt like it was coming from inside his own head, issuing orders. Stupid thing to think, but he couldn’t shake the idea. _In point one miles,_ she said in that calm, rational, hold-still voice, _use the middle lane to turn left onto Jackie Robinson Parkway East._

He hated it.

Too late, he was always too late, he realized Sam had asked him a question and was waiting for the answer. “What?” he said.

Sam hung his head down, grinning. It did something to his cheekbones that Bucky liked. “Shit, man. I made a dumb joke. Gets dumber if I say it twice.”

Yes, that was true. Say a thing twice, and you have to reconsider whether it was worth saying in the first place. Bucky knew the feeling, and he hardly ever said a thing the first time anyway. “I’m being too quiet.”

“There’s no rules,” said Sam. His voice changed a little, saying it. More professional, like a clerk in a store saying “Have a nice day.”

“I’m being too quiet and it’s making you uncomfortable.”

“I’m a little uncomfortable, yeah,” Sam said, still with that store-clerk voice on. “But you don’t _make_ me feel anything, and what I’m feeling isn’t your responsibility.”

Bucky shrugged one shoulder, the metal one. He wanted to fix it, and he wasn’t smart enough to know how to fix it. Steve would know what to ask. Clumsily, he tried, “What’s your job?”

“Avenger,” said Sam.

“They fired you.”

Sam put a hand out the window, testing for a breeze. “Fugitive, I guess.”

“Before that?”

“Before that I ran a support group for returning veterans,” said Sam. “Do you know about support groups?”

Bucky knew the word support and the word group, but he couldn’t put them together in a way that made any sense. “No.”

“People who share common experiences get together to talk about them. Veterans in the US Army, they come down to the VA once a week, twice a week, and talk about what’s going on with them. Maybe it’s stuff they can’t share with their partners and their friends, but it helps to talk to other people who’ve had similar things happen. So—” Sam took his hands off the wheel to clap his hands, and Bucky registered the moment of danger, how easily he could spin the wheel, steer them into the stone barrier. “—I facilitate that.”

Facilitate. Make easy. Bucky didn’t get it. “Why do they have to—”

“Yeah,” said Sam, like he was expecting the question. “It helps people to talk about bad shit that happened to them. That’s why therapy’s good, having a therapist, you know about that? Someone to talk to.”

Change the subject, Bucky thought.

“When someone doesn’t talk about the bad stuff,” Sam said, “it gets out some other way.”

“Doesn’t have to.”

“Usually does, though,” said Sam.

“Not if— People don’t want to hear everybody else’s pathetic little stories.”

“My vets aren’t pathetic,” said Sam. Angry.

“Oh,” Bucky said, feigning mild surprise. “Were we talking about your vets?”

For a second, Sam didn’t answer, and Bucky braced himself to not hit back because even if Sam was a bossy, slow-driving asshole, he was also Bucky’s only line on Steve. Then Sam shook his head and said, “Okay, you got me.”

“Yeah?” This time, his surprise was real.

“Yeah,” said Sam.

Steve wouldn’t have admitted that. Stubborn bastard. He was great on the big things, honor and glory, but he’d rather eat shit than admit he’d said something wrong in an argument. Course, he didn’t usually say something wrong to start with. Usually, he won every argument just by being himself.

“You think I should get a therapist?” Bucky said, teasing.

“Not my place to tell you what you should do.”

Bucky rolled down his window and leaned his head on it. There wasn’t much wind, but what there was of it ruffled his hair, a little, and it felt nice. It felt like being free. He tipped his chin down to aim his voice at Sam. “S’at mean you think I don’t need to talk to someone? I’m all set like I am now?”

Sam didn’t answer. The more he didn’t answer, the more Bucky wanted to know what he was thinking.

“Or you think I should stay in cryo,” he said. “That’s what Steve wants, didn’t even argue with me when I said I was gonna do it.”

“What do you mean, didn’t argue with you? He didn’t—seriously?”

“Nope,” Bucky said. “Just shook my hand and watched me go down. You know he doesn’t think he’s going to see thirty-five. Bet he figures if he waits long enough, he’ll die and I won’t be his problem anymore.”

“Now see,” said Sam. “I spent the night with Steve after you—”

Bucky snorted.

“Oh, fuck off, that’s not what I—”

“Fucking his sorrows away?” said Bucky gleefully, happy to be off the subject and happier still at the look of abject horror on Sam’s face. “He still do that thing when he comes where—”

Sam clapped his hands over his ears. “La la la la la la, quit it, man, how you gonna—that’s disgusting, I don’t need to be thinking about Steve like that.”

Bucky laughed and drew his knees up to his chin so he could laugh into them. “No, no, listen, cause when—”

“I will pull this car over.”

Bucky’s stomach hurt from laughing. It caught at him, that feeling. If he had still believed in God, he’d have prayed to keep it. But by the time you noticed it, to pray for it to stay, it was already halfway to gone.

(And if Sam pushed, this is what he would find out: Bucky knew that if Steve died, they’d wake him up for the funeral. There would be nothing left, then. Nobody who would need him to stay. He smiled at Steve because they both understood, he thought: They weren’t meant for this world, super soldiers, men out of time. This was their way out, their escape from each other.)

“He was a wreck,” Sam said.

Bucky didn’t want to hear it.

“You gotta know,” said Sam. “He was a mess. Cried all over my jacket. I had to keep handing him tissues all night. He didn’t try to tell you not to go?”

Bucky said, jaw tight, “No.”

“Awright. Well. You don’t want to talk about it, we don’t talk about it. But for the record, he was a mess, and I thought it was a shitty idea to begin with.”

“Was not,” said Bucky, nettled.

“Was too.” Sam craned his head out the window, checking to see if the traffic was any better ahead. What he saw did not seem to please him.

“I’m dangerous. I’m a loaded fucking gun.”

Sam shrugged. “Seem fine to me, apart from you apparently don’t like for people to observe safety precautions while they’re driving in heavy traffic.” When Bucky put his head to one side, questioning, Sam said, “Seatbelt.”

“Can’t do it one-handed. I don’t seem fine, I fucking—at the gas station, I could’ve—”

“You could’ve been triggered by something there—that part happened—and then you could’ve had a panic attack—that happened too—and then you could’ve killed everyone in the place, me included, before they ever got a call in to the cops.” Sam put a wrist through the steering wheel. “Weren’t even close to that last thing, were you?”

Bucky flexed his fingers open and shut. “Couldn’t do it one-handed,” he said.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “You’re helpless as a baby without that arm. Can’t even buckle a seatbelt.”

Bucky said, “Heh. Yeah.” Then, “You could’ve put up a pretty good fight, huh?”

“It’s harder when you can’t kill the other guy.”

“You can kill me,” said Bucky. He looked at Sam steadily, because this was important, this mattered if nothing else they talked about did. “If you gotta. If it’s gonna save civilian lives, help Steve, help you—you can kill me. I’m giving you permission.”

Sam looked back at him. Eyes all the way off the road. _Watch,_ Bucky wanted to say. A single moment of inattention could tank the whole mission, and he didn’t want Sam looking at him like that, responsible and sorry, and at the end of it tell him that he was worth saving, no matter what. Wasn’t that Steve’s line?

Sam said, “Okay. If it’s gonna save civilian lives, you can kill me too.”

Spoke badly of Bucky’s life that this was the nicest thing anyone’d said to him since he fell. He didn’t trust his voice, so he just nodded. Sam nodded too, and returned his eyes to the road.

Bucky unclenched his fist.

When he could talk again, he said, “It’s harder on the driver’s side.”

“ _Yeah_ it’s harder on the driver’s side!” Sam said, waving an enthusiastic hand towards his crotch.

Bucky laughed for real. “The _seatbelt,_ jackass. It’s harder on the driver’s side and I haven’t been a passenger too much lately so I got out of the habit. The prosthetic, you know, it’s set to hold on tighter whenever there’s friction.”

Sam cackled, and Bucky punched his shoulder very, very, very lightly. “Sorry!” Sam said. “Sorry, sorry, yeah, tell me all your friction stories, buddy, I’m all ears.”

“It’s not a story. Seatbelts were always a pain in the ass. The arm had sensors in it so if something starts to slip, it tightens the fingers automatically. You have to do a manual release.” That time, he heard it before Sam started laughing.

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

“No!” said Bucky, aiming for a tone of affront. “God’s honest truth, that’s how they set it up. The hand clamps down, it’ll get stuck on whatever you were trying to hold onto. You gotta get it off yourself any time there’s friction.”

Sam put his head down on the steering wheel, howling. Which was okay. They were stopped (traffic), so it was okay. “You,” Sam said, “are. The worst.”

Bucky twisted his mouth against a smile and looked out the window so Sam wouldn’t see how smug he looked. A very small part of him wished that Steve were there so Bucky could say “See!” and Steve would have to see that he was better.

God, no, not a small part of him. All of him. He wanted Steve there. He wanted Steve back. Anything, he’d give anything.

This time, Sam didn’t try to keep the joke going, and Bucky was grateful. He tilted his head back against the open window, to feel the wind in his face.

* * *

The chair was real, and he was being—tampered with. Medically. The ice was part of the experiment. There were two main people working with Steve, and there were more than four people involved altogether. Steve had figured out that much, and not much else. For instance, he didn’t know if the ice was real or a memory or a hallucination or some kind of induced brain spasm. He didn’t know if there were more than four people on-site at a given time, or if his captors were swapping out guards. If the leather straps restraining him were real leather or something that only felt like leather, to make him think that he was weaker than he was.

Too many variables, Tony would say.

He still couldn’t remember how he had been taken. Going to see Tony was clear—

(Bad things were always easy to remember.)

—but everything after that was fuzzy. Not easy to distinguish dreams from reality. He remembered a gravestone and Bucky’s hand in a black fingerless glove. One of those things could not be real—Bucky was asleep, safe, in Wakanda—yet their reality in Steve’s memory was the same.

He must not have been able to get in touch with Tony, before they took him. There must have been a taking, because he had been free before and now was not. But it had been three days—more, maybe, depending on how long and how often he’d been unconscious—three days minimum.

Every time they sent him back into the ice, they were angry, a woman and a man. They muttered about recalibration, snapped at each other over whose mistake it had been.

They didn’t like it when he got sick after the ice; he’d figured that out quickly. Not just vomiting, which they might have disliked because it made more work for them, the clean-up. They minded when he had headaches, when he was nauseated. It meant that whatever they were doing wasn’t working. Or wasn’t working right. He played it up, how sick he felt. Gasped for breath and rested his head to one side when they turned off the ice (brought him back from the ice? stopped making him think there was ice?), and when they asked if his head ached, snarled at them to go to hell.

Sometimes, they went through the same steps as if they were going to put him in the ice, and Steve’s body tensed with anticipation, but then, nothing.

Or then, sleep, and he dreamed. The dreams were vivid, sensory, perfect, as if he were living his own life over again. Tony flew up and up and up, and Steve didn’t know yet that he would survive it. Nat was deadly grace, always fighting. Sam tried on aviator glasses and leaned backward to check in the store window how they looked.

And farther back even than that: A young, bright-eyed Bucky blew into glass bottles with different amounts of filthy river water in them, trying to make a song, and a skinny boy that Steve knew to be himself laughed until he cried. Steve applauded from across the street, and Bucky met his eyes and looked away like he didn’t even recognize him.

Steve was glad when they woke him up from that one. It tore him up to see Bucky look at him like he was a stranger.

(Again.)

Once, the woman said, “He’s still getting the headaches, seriously? Fuck.” The man—Steve was pretty sure he was South African—whispered “Hey,” and she didn’t say any more. That was the second day Steve could remember. On the third, they had been more careful. No talk at all.

Three days, at least, probably longer. He must not have been able to get in touch with Tony, or Tony would be here by now. Except that he remembered dialing the number, and he couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t steer his brain away from wondering, what if he’d called and Tony had hung up on him? They hadn’t left things well, and what if—

After Bucky, after Russia, he’d been the first to call. He’d said, “Hi Tony. It’s Steve Rogers here,” and Tony had hung up on him. Twice without speaking. Three times altogether.

Once, after he left Wakanda. His voice was none too steady, probably, and he couldn’t be sure if he had done that on purpose, to make Tony feel sorry for him. How stupid, if he had. Tony didn’t know that Bucky had gone down, and if he did know he’d be glad.

A second time, from Idaho, when he was getting his fake passport and thinking, _We’re in the same country,_ as if that mattered to how angry Tony was.

On the third try, there was a longer pause. A longer silence. Steve was pretty sure. He said Tony’s name again, and then, “It’s Steve.”

Pitched a little lower than Steve expected: “I know it’s you. Nobody else has this number.”

Steve inhaled hard. He hadn’t thought Tony would answer him. Not this time, not ever. “I gave it to the others,” he said. “In case I wasn’t around to—”

“Wouldn’t recommend you finish that sentence,” said Tony. “So. You need something, is that what this is?”

He shouldn’t have been stung by that. What else would Tony think, if Steve was calling on his emergency phone? “No. I wanted—” To hear your voice. “—to check in. See how you’re doing.”

“Oh, you mean since you literally stabbed me in the heart with your symbol of American heroism and left me for dead in the middle of Siberia? How I’m doing after that?”

“I never wanted,” Steve began.

“Spare me.”

Steve didn’t know how to answer. He was silent, and Tony was too, and the silence stretched out so long that Steve didn’t realize for nearly a full minute that the call had been lost. (That Tony had, after all, hung up on him.)

That night, he had dreamt of a funeral. Nobody would tell him who had died. He thought maybe it was him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky can too drive stick* and Steve collects information
> 
> *get your mind out of the gutter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh Lord how has this taken so long how did I allow it to reach this state
> 
> I am nearly, nearly done with this story. I've got eight chapters finished and maybe two chapters left to write. I am going to finish this motherfucker by the end of March. why are words so hard. Send help.

Not without some argument, they had decided to drive through the night to get to Maine. In Bucky’s opinion, there was no question that they had to get to Maine fast, before the guys moved Steve somewhere else. (Which he refused to picture, or even think about hard. When they got there, he’d be able to track them.) Sam made the case that if they stopped at gas stations, they could ask if anyone had seen Steve.

“They kept him in the trunk,” said Bucky, trying not to imagine it. Sam looked at Bucky long enough to make him nervous. “Watch the road.”

Sam huffed a laugh and obeyed. “We don’t know they kept him— We don’t know that. Don’t be thinking about what we don’t know yet.”

 _Yet_ was right.

“Might could get security footage of the guys,” Sam pointed out, after a pause. “If someone at a gas station remembered them, and they had cameras.”

Bucky shrugged.

“You don’t think?” said Sam.

“Yeah, we might could.”

Sam put on his blinker and changed lanes. “If they remembered them. And if they were willing to show us the tapes. It’s a lot of if.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “Lot of if. Someone went back to the gas stations later, asking about us, they’d know we’d been there. Don’t want them to find out we’re coming. Keep the element of surprise.” He drummed his fingers against the windowsill. Sam had rolled it up and put on the air conditioning after an hour in traffic. Bucky didn’t like the antiseptic perfection of the car air conditioner.

“Okay. We’ll go straight through. Can you drive part of the way?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s stick.”

Bucky bristled. “I can drive stick.”

“Cool,” said Sam.

Not that it was any of Sam’s damn business, but Bucky had never liked, the asset had not liked, using the metal arm for driving. They’d had to put a chip in his brain to control the arm, and that meant if they wanted to program the arm to do something, they could do it. And cars, you had to be in control, able to change your mind, react quickly, so the asset drove one-handed, and used its knees to steer when it changed gears.

“We are gonna have to stop for gas at some point,” Sam said.

“I’ll wake you up.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, or you could just pump the gas yourself.”

“Okay, yeah. I don’t like gas stations though,” said Bucky.

“Oh yeah? How come?”

How come anything, asshole? “They make me feel bad.”

“Bad how?”

Bucky didn’t want to think about it. He angled himself away from Sam, curling his legs into his chest, and pressed the button to roll down the window. The wind in his face helped, a little. He rested his fingers on the sill, half-in and half-out.

“It’s hot, dude,” Sam said, making the window go back up from his side.

Bucky slammed his hand down on the window, to stop it from rising. “Stop it! Fucking stop it! You can’t, you’re not, it’s not your fucking, fucking—stop stop _stop_ —”

Too late, he realized Sam had stopped. Stopped when he asked. Stopped and was looking at him in that careful, sideways way that he hated in Steve. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Nothing to be sorry about.”

Bucky closed his eyes. His heart was thudding, and he had to work hard to force his breathing to stay even, so Sam wouldn’t, so Wilson wouldn’t ask more fucking questions. Two hours in a car was too long (let alone eight, which was how long it was supposedly going to take to get to Maine). When you stuck with someone that long, they started thinking you were buddies. They started thinking they knew you well enough to worry about you and ask questions. Very low, he said, “Do your vets.”

Sam said, “Do my vets what?”

“Nothing. Just, do they ever, do they talk about how some shit makes them feel bad for no reason and it’s really fucking stupid but then they sort of can’t change how it makes them feel so just—” He had to try hard not to gasp for air, talking like this.

“Yes,” Sam said, quickly. “Yeah. All of that. That’s something they talk about a lot.”

Bucky nodded and kept nodding. Stupidly, it made him want to cry to know that there were others like him. Not like him, he was the only thing like him, but like him enough to be assaulted by memory, thrown back by it. “What do they.”

“Do?”

Bucky didn’t look at Sam. It felt so fucking dangerous to ask. “Like if they forget where they. Whatever.”

“That’s a good question,” Sam said. His voice was steady and professional, and Bucky hated it, and himself for having to ask, and Sam for having to answer. “One of my vets says it helps him out to count five things he’s experiencing with his senses right that minute. Whatever he can hear and see and touch.”

What if I can’t see anything, Bucky thought.

But he tried it, anyway. One: Wind in his face. Now that they were out of the city and getting to the end of the bad traffic, there was a real breeze. Two: The chemical stench of the car’s air conditioning, not yet dispersed. Three: Fuzzy fabric of the car door, under his fingertips. Four: Distant sirens. Five: Sam Wilson, in the driver’s seat, the bones of his face in profile.

He couldn’t tell if it made him feel better or not.

“Were you in combat?” he asked.

“Combat zones, yeah,” said Sam, “but Riley was the one who— My partner Riley and I were pararescuemen, PJs, they have that when you were serving?”

“Don’t know,” said Bucky. “They kept us pretty need-to-know on most stuff. Always seemed like Steve knew everything, but that’s just cause people trusted him. People are always running their mouths off to Steve. Rescuing who?”

Sam shrugged with one shoulder. “Whoever. They paired us up with a lot of different units.”

Riley was dead. Bucky knew that from Steve. He said gruffly, “That’s good work.”

“Thanks,” said Sam. “It’s, ah, not always— Can’t always do it right. You lose people. Sometimes.”

Of course. That was war.

* * *

In Connecticut, Bucky noticed that Sam’s eyes were drooping, and he reached all the way over with his good arm to nudge Sam’s shoulder.

Sam jolted. “M’awake.”

“Okay,” said Bucky. “Get off somewhere. I’ll drive.”

“Sure?”

“Yeah. You can get gas at the same time.” (It wasn’t like he could avoid gas stations forever, and they didn’t all have glass screens like that, and he didn’t have to go inside, and it was stupid anyway because what he was feeling wasn’t even real.)

But when Sam got off the interstate, he pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot, dug a twenty out of his pocket, and offered it to Bucky. “Hey, grab me a large fry and a medium Coke, huh? And whatever you want. I’ll get gas and come back.”

“What?” said Bucky stupidly.

The car behind them honked, so Sam parked. “Large fry, medium Coke, okay? I’ll come back after I get gas and then you can drive.”

“I’m not going to get—” Bucky shook his head. He was pissed at Sam for thinking that he couldn’t, wasn’t, that he wasn’t strong enough to go to a fucking gas station. “I’m not going to do the same thing again. I’m—I’ll just, I know about it now. I can go away in my—I’m not going to do the same thing again.”

“Take the money, Barnes,” said Sam. “We can have a chat about how dissociation’s not a healthy plan later. Get me some damn fries, I’m hungry.”

Bucky took the money and got out of the car. After a moment’s thought, he adjusted the passenger seat as far forward as it would go, and he winked at Sam. The feeling of it was familiar. James Buchanan Barnes had, he thought, been able to get away with an awful lot.

“Such a prick,” Sam said, but his mouth was curved into a grin.

The people at the McDonald’s were nicer than Bucky expected, nicer than it was safe to expect people to be. When he ordered more food than Sam’s twenty could pay for, they gave it to him free. (They felt sorry for him, they would underestimate him, they would die fast and easy.) Bucky said, “Thank you,” to the cashiers. He said, “Thank you for—my buddy and I are—thank you.”

 _Stuttering, crippled veteran,_ the asset thought. _That’s what they think. Show them power._

He couldn’t leave. He had to wait for the food to be ready, and he wanted to throw up, and he wanted to kill something, and he wanted to run and run and run. When they finally handed him the two bags, he crushed the open mouths of them together in his one hand, too hard. He said, “Thank you, miss. Thank you for your generosity,” and fled.

(He could be polite. He remembered how to be polite to a kind young woman behind a register; he knew exactly what her corpse would look like, blood in her hair, unseeing eyes.)

The old Bucky, James Buchanan Barnes, had winked at girls and made them like him. Boys, too, now and then, but winking at boys had felt like a betrayal of Steve in a way that—

Bucky missed his notebook. When the girl, the one Steve had kissed because he didn’t have any damn sense, when she brought back Sam’s wings and Steve’s shield, she didn’t bring back Bucky’s notebook. Not her fault. She didn’t know that it held him together, the few and scattered fragments of who he used to be.

He ate a French fry while he waited outside for Sam and thought that it was pretty much the best thing he’d ever tasted.

When Sam came to pick him up, he rolled the car window down on the driver’s side and said “Got enough food?”

“Fuck you,” Bucky said agreeably. He felt better, now that his stomach wasn’t so screamingly empty. He liked the French fries. Lots of salt. Sam got out of the car and waited for Bucky to settle into the driver’s seat, then stretched the seatbelt out and shoved it at Bucky’s good hand. Without comment, Bucky took it and buckled. Goddamn obsessed with seatbelts, Sam Wilson.

Sam forgot Bucky had put the passenger side seat all the way up, so Bucky got to watch, eating fries with elaborate unconcern, while Sam tried to get in the car, failed, got back out, and slid the seat back.

“Having problems, Wilson?”

“You’re gonna have problems,” Sam muttered, buckling up, “when I eat up all your fries.”

Bucky grinned and peeled out of the parking lot like there was something on his tail. “Your car’s got shitty pickup,” he said, tearing through a yellow light to make it to the interstate.

“The ingratitude.” Sam carefully relocated several burgers and fry cartons to a single bag, then flattened the empty one and started squeezing ketchup packets into the center of it. “Ketchup?”

Bucky tried some fries dipped in ketchup. Not bad. “Thanks for coming to get me,” he said, because he was grateful, for that part. Being able to help find Steve.

“Wasn’t out of my way.”

“You spend a lot of time in Wakanda?”

Sam glanced sideways at him. “Me and Steve check in on you from time to time.”

“Oh.” Bucky sat with that for a minute, turning it over in his head. What was there to check? Did they mistrust him that much, even unconscious?

“You don’t like that?”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“In Wakanda?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t—going back down, it wasn’t a _trick,_ I wasn’t gonna—”

“Whoa,” said Sam. “Who said trick? There were a couple—shit, Steve’ll be pissed at me for worrying you. T’Challa had a couple people come looking for you one time, is all. When you first went down. He got in touch with Steve and let him know, said it was taken care of, but Steve’s—you know how Steve is. He just wanted to touch base every now and then, swing by and check everything was still good.”

“Oh,” Bucky said.

They ate fries in silence for a while, and Bucky steered with his knees. Had Bucky Barnes, James Buchanan Barnes, ever driven a car? He couldn’t remember. He’d have to ask Steve.

“Bucky. _Barnes._ ”

Bucky jumped. “Yeah.”

“I said, you forgot my— Know what, forget it. Thanks for picking up the food, man. It was good.” Sam reached across the gearshift, and Bucky had a weird, stomach-swooping moment in which he thought Sam was going to touch his hand.

Actually, of course, Sam was just getting rid of trash. He swapped Bucky’s empty fry carton out for a full one, settled the ketchup bag in the little tray between the two seats, and reclined his own seat all the way back.

“Night,” said Bucky, quietly.

Sam turned his head to look at Bucky, his eyes catching the light from the street lamps. _Pretty,_ Bucky thought. Sam said, “Good night, Bucky.”

Driving at night was peaceful. Bucky waited ten minutes and unbuckled his seatbelt, waited ten more and let it retract all the way. Sam was asleep by then, rolled slightly onto his side, facing away, shivering, though it was warm in the car.

Whenever Bucky changed his clothes, he played a game, a memory test, checking to remember where he had gotten each piece of clothing. The jacket he had on was stolen from a rich asshole in Varna who was berating the young concierge because of some reason Bucky couldn’t be bothered sticking around to listen to. The concierge saw him take the leather jacket off the guy’s suitcase handle, and he didn’t say a word.

The lining of it was silk, soft as anything, and it warmed to your skin. Rich people had nice things. Keeping one eye on the road, Bucky wrestled free of his jacket and draped it over Sam’s chest and arms, then returned to gobbling fast food.

* * *

The fourth time Steve called, Tony said “Hi” before he had a chance to say anything, then added, “You should know that you’re not getting forgiven any time soon for making me use a flip phone.”

In the uncomfortable armchair in his cruddy hotel room in Belgrade, Steve put his head back and smiled at the ceiling. “Are there other kinds of phones now?”

“Oh, are you calling me from 1999? I didn’t realize.”

“Yes,” said Steve. “I’ve mastered time travel, and I’m using it to harass my—” He stumbled over the next word. “C-coworker.”

“Former,” said Tony, chillier.

Steve swallowed. “Let’s say former and future, huh?”

Tony spoke in a rush. “I don’t—know what to say to that. I don’t even know which part of your bottomless capacity for denial I’m supposed to be addressing, here. If any. Like what path do you see here that ends with us back together?”

“I,” said Steve, breathless.

“Fuck, I meant—Jesus, Steve, the _Avengers._ ”

Of course the Avengers. Steve knew he’d be lucky if Tony ever let him into the new Avengers Tower again, let alone— He knew he couldn’t have Tony back. The warmth of his body in Steve’s arms. Brushing a careful finger along the soft line of Tony’s lashes when his eyes were closed, seeing Tony’s lips curve into a smile in response. That was over. Actions had consequences.

“I know,” he said. “I don’t know, Tony. I think the team did a lot of good. I don’t want to accept that we’re just—finished. Forever.”

Another pause. “I’m so mad at you,” Tony said at last, but he sounded tired, not angry. He sounded tired in a way that made Steve want to put him to bed and stand guard outside his room to be sure that he was not disturbed. Tired like nobody cared enough to make him sleep.

“You came out to help us,” said Steve, “and we all almost died because I kept a secret from you. It’s right that you’re angry.”

“He was brainwashed.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Steve agreed, “but I should have told you.”

“Why didn’t you?” Tony sounded genuinely curious.

Steve sighed, his fingers playing with a stray thread at the arm of his chair. “I guess—it finally seemed like you didn’t hate me, sometimes, and he wasn’t, I didn’t know if we’d ever find him, if he’d ever let us find him. And once we started—” Could he say dating? Walking out? What was the right word for what they had been? “—getting closer, I. It was wrong. I was wrong. I wanted to be with you, and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to hate me. Again.”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “I can see how you wouldn’t want to piss off the guy currently sucking your dick before you get the chance to reunite with your true love.”

Steve didn’t, couldn’t, answer. They’d only had sex once, before—everything, and he had been so stupidly happy that he didn’t sleep that night. He’d thought, _whatever there is between us, we can always work it out, come back to each other._ In the morning, Tony had woken up and smiled at him.

Tony said, “Sorry. That was shitty.”

“He’s not,” said Steve, jerky. “My true love.”

“You’re a crap liar.”

“The guy sucking my—” Steve couldn’t say it. “Is that what you think—God, Tony.”

“Why do you have to keep calling me?” said Tony. “Do you think I don’t have _enough_ without—”

Why do you keep answering, thought Steve. He said, “You sound so tired.”

“I want to hear something good,” Tony said, his voice thin.

“I can do that,” said Steve, too eager maybe. “Hey, Tony. I can do that. Every time I call you, okay? I’ll start with something good. How would that be?”

Silence. Then, “Look out your window and tell me something you see that’s not shit.”

 _Of course,_ Steve thought. _He wants to know where I am, of course, of course._ But they had gotten to where they were now, Tony’s voice heavy with suspicion, because they hadn’t trusted each other. They could not be anything to each other, without trust.

Steve crossed to his window and opened the blinds. “Okay,” he said. “I’m in Belgrade, and there’s—looks like a taxi driver on the street, chatting to another guy. They’re laughing. The other guy has a bottle in his hand. I can’t see if it’s beer, it’s too dark. Does Serbia not have open container laws?”

“They do not,” said Tony. “Excellent country.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah?” Tony said. “Have you been before?” He already sounded more relaxed, more normal. It could have been a conversation over dinner at the tower—but that hurt to think about, the easiness of those days, the normalcy of it. Bickering over dishes and oven space.

“This is my first time. Everyone’s been nice considering my Serbian’s terrible.”

Tony said gravely, “My Serbian is superbian.”

Steve burst out laughing, harder than the joke was funny because he was so grateful that Tony had made it. “Awful,” he said. “Absolutely awful. My Serbian is like ten hundred million times better than your jokes.”

Tony said something.

“What?” said Steve.

“I said I fuck your sunshine, you piece of shit,” said Tony.

“Geez.”

“In flawless Serbian.”

Steve laughed. “Yeah?”

“According to Friday.”

Steve had never gotten used to Friday. Every time Vision spoke, he had been surprised by it, to hear that voice coming out of a person instead of the walls. “Does Friday kiss her mother with that mouth?” he said.

“Technically, I believe I’m her mother.”

“If I may, a follow-up,” said Steve.

“Come on, I don’t have time to get into the gender binary with you right now, I’m trying to make world peace happen, give a guy a break.”

“If anyone could make world peace happen,” he said, “I’d put all my money on you.”

Tony snorted. “No you wouldn’t.”

“Would so,” Steve shot back.

“Well.” Tony was smiling now. Steve could hear it in his voice, and he wanted to cry with gratitude at the sound of it. “Well. You are a well-known poor person, Rogers, so putting all your money on something isn’t all that impressive. That’s basically your whole origin story, skinny and poor.”

“And tubercular,” Steve said. “Don’t forget that part.”

“I could never. I knew your whole medical history before I was potty-trained.”

“You did not.”

“Did too. It went: Captain Steven Grant Rogers’s medical history, then potty training, then particle physics.”

“Oh,” said Steve. “This is awkward. I had particle physics under my belt before I was toddling. Aren’t you supposed to be the science genius?”

“Joke’s on you, Cap, all that 1920s shit’s out of date. Should’ve held off a few years.”

“Why do you think I had to go into the military?”

Tony laughed, and Steve could picture it as vividly as if Tony were there with him, his head back, tie and collar yanked loose to expose the lines of his throat. It made him shiver a little.

Someone swore, very close to his head, jolting Steve out of the memory. He said, fuzzily, “Wait,” but nobody heard him. People were yelling. The one with the accent, and a new voice, whiny, thin. Mad at each other. “We don’t need the picture!”

“In Stark’s demo—”

“I don’t give a fuck about the demo! You aren’t paying me to—”

The woman’s voice. “Guys, shut up, he’s coming out of it.”

Whatever the “it” was that Steve was coming out of, he wanted back in. A dream, he guessed. Tony’s laugh. He gave himself twenty seconds of wanting it back, the memory, the dream, the crick in his back because the chair in Belgrade had been uncomfortable, the stray thread that he twisted and untwisted around his index finger. Tony’s laugh.

Then he brought himself back to reality. Across the room—which was good, because it gave Steve a rough sense of the place’s dimensions—the woman was whispering urgently. She forgot about supersoldier hearing, or else whatever they were giving him to counteract the serum was failing in a few particulars.

(Good to know.)

She was whispering, “—the date we agreed on. He needs to be up and walking.”

Good. Good. Walking was good. New information to be gathered, and even the possibility of escape, or getting word to somebody of what was going on. If one of the other Avengers had been there (God forbid), Steve would have joked that they needed the exercise. He made the joke anyway, quietly to himself, and smiled dutifully at it, because you had to keep your spirits up.

He’d tell that to Tony, when he saw Tony again. He would say “I’m great at being kidnapped. I should give classes,” and Tony would laugh. Every time he made Tony laugh, it felt like he’d just won a prize. Like maybe it wasn’t a mistake that Tony was with him.

(Tony wasn’t with him anymore, he reminded himself, stern. That was over, but still, Steve wanted to hear him laugh.)

Up and walking took some time to achieve. They were scared of him, which was good to know; it meant they weren’t sure if the drug, whatever it was, was working. They cuffed his ankles first, and someone muttered something about getting him some shoes.

Steve remembered drop foot, suddenly. It had been a concern for—who? They’d tossed someone into a medically induced coma, Clint maybe, and they’d had to bring special shoes to the hospital to prevent his feet from getting messed up. Since Steve was being kept in a chair, he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t matter. He made a mental note to keep flexing his ankles, maybe that would help.

(Tony would know.)

“Hold still, Cap,” said the man with the accent. “We’ll get you to a shower, clean you up a little.”

Oh God, he wanted a shower. He said, “Hot?”

The woman laughed. “Hot as you like.”

They were pulling round sticky somethings off his skin, temples and forehead. Not pleasant, but an X in the “probably mentally compromised” box, and that was good to know. They could be pumping something into his bloodstream and monitoring his brainwaves. Not great. While he was considering this, he felt tugs at the insides of his elbows. Just pressure, no pain. Disconnecting IVs, he thought. More than likely they’d put in PICC lines when he was out, so they could just keep giving him—whatever it was. The drugs that made him feel so weak (they must be counteracting the serum), and whatever the treatments were that made him dream of ice.

They cuffed his wrists behind his back and connected something heavy to the ankle cuffs.

“Okay, Cap. John Smith here’s going to take you to get cleaned up,” said the woman. She didn’t sound young, Tony’s age maybe. “Don’t give him any trouble, okay? We don’t take well to failure here, and Mr. Smith has a young daughter. Do you understand?”

Hell yes he understood. If Tony had taught him anything, it was how to play to an audience. “You’d harm his girl?” Steve said, angling his body slightly away from the woman’s voice, as if he couldn’t bear her proximity. “An innocent child?”

Feet shuffled near him. The woman said, “Save it,” and Steve was shoved upright and forward, onto his feet. The guard caught his arm, steadied him. Steve reminded himself that didn’t necessarily mean _ally._

The guard was carrying whatever the heavy thing was attached to Steve’s ankle cuffs. The chains caught and tugged slightly with every step, and Steve had to focus most of his attention on staying upright. He felt dizzy, and his knees were weak. At least five days now, and they hadn’t fed him, unless they were doing it intravenously.

He tried to make a mental map of where they were taking him, but it became obvious that the guard was deliberately keeping him disoriented. A lot of turns in opposing directions. They didn’t go outside at all, though, which meant it was one big structure. Carpet, hardwood, and tile floors, which made him think house. Down a flight of (carpeted) stairs to a (carpeted) level. Concrete floors after that. Basement.

The shower felt amazing. They didn’t let him take off his clothes, and he wouldn’t have wanted to, nor was there any kind of soap. But still. The hot water beat down on him like a blessing. He tilted his face up to it, twisting his mouth and nose from side to side, and the blindfold shifted, not much but some. Wooden beams, exposed, above him, near enough to touch if his arms had been free.

“Doing all right, Cap?” said a voice, the new one, the reedy-voiced man.

Steve said, “Never better” because to hell with that guy.

“Enjoying the shower?”

That wasn’t worth a response, so Steve didn’t give one. He turned around and rolled his head forward, letting the water drum against the back of his neck. It felt incredible, until black sparkles began to dance in front of his eyes and he folded like a pup tent, staggering sideways until he hit a wall that he could slide down.

“Hey, ho, let’s not have any of that! Get the water off, Johnny boy.”

Taps creaked, and the water stopped running. To the right, far enough away that Steve wouldn’t have been able to reach him with his elbows even if he’d had the energy for a fight, the reedy-voiced man slid down the wall too and spoke again. “Sorry about this, Captain Rogers.”

“I don’t know about you, son,” said Steve, “but where I’m from, sorry means that you’d do it different another time. This mean you’re planning to let me go?” He felt goddamn terrible, and his shoulders hurt where his arms were pulled back by the cuffs.

The reedy-voiced man laughed. “That’s very good. Oh, that’s _very_ good. Well, there you go, I guess I’m not sorry after all. But, hey. It’s not forever, right?”

A small, uncomfortable noise from the guard, the one they called John Smith. John Smith was now Steve’s official target audience. On the pretext—though it wasn’t a pretext—of getting blood back to his head, Steve put his head forward and tried to peer over the blindfold, enough to see the guy. He caught a glimpse of heavily tattooed skin and army fatigues. A soldier, maybe.

Steve tried to pull his legs up so he could rest his head on his knees. His bare feet kept slipping on the wet floor. He wanted to sleep.

“You get it,” said the reedy man. There was a reedy / Reed Richards / dick joke to be made here. Steve would have to think of it, so he could tell it to Tony later. Tony liked dick jokes.

“The kidnapping part, or the torture, or—”

“It’s healthy competition!” said Reedy Guy. “Your pal Stark’s got his— Oh Smithy, don’t shake your head at me, you big goon. Mr. Stark’s got his whole thing going, with the cute little acronym, and he had your super-recovery around for developing that, so in a way it’s poetic justice, don’t you think? If I have you to help me out too?”

Trying hard to keep his words from slurring, Steve said, “That’s not what poetic justice means. Or healthy competition.” He paused. “Or goon, actually.”

“Potato potahto. Trust and believe, Stevie-boy, we’re making people’s lives better, you and me.”

“And Mr. Smith, I guess,” said Steve, and this time he did let his words slur a little.

Feet shuffling, across the room. The guard said, “Uh—is the room ready yet? I could take him back?” There was discomfort in his voice, Steve thought, but it might have been wishful thinking.

“They’re gonna radio me,” said Reedy Guy. “Longer it takes, better sign for us.”

(“Actually, you’d be a way better kidnap victim than me,” Steve would say to Tony, when he saw him again. “I don’t even know how to jam a walkie-talkie signal.”)

“It’s doctor,” Steve said. (People always forgot that.)

Reedy Guy didn’t answer right away. There were clicking noises, like he was twiddling with dials. Finally he said, “Excuse me?”

“Tony Stark. He’s not a mister. He’s got multiple PhDs, and he doesn’t use people as lab rats. For the record.”

Reedy Guy’s walkie buzzed before he could answer. Shouting sounds emerged from it, breaking glass. It sounded like chaos, and Steve tried to get the energy together to think of, and make, a move. “Bill Maher!” shouted a voice on the other end, crackly and unclear. “Bill Maher!”

“Shut the fuck up!” Reedy Guy screamed into the walkie. “You fucking get him under control, this is a controlled fucking test!”

“He’s loose?” said the guard.

Reedy Guy kept yelling into his walkie-talkie as he left the probably-basement, without answering the guard at all. But Steve had stopped registering words after _He’s loose. He’s loose_ meant someone else. Someone who should be under control, the way Steve was under control.

Another prisoner.

Hell.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Sam is a city mouse, and Steve figures out a thing

Sam Wilson slept for shit, was what Bucky learned in the five hours between New York City and Maine. Even with Bucky’s jacket covering him, he shivered until his teeth chattered and jolted hard awake every half-hour or so and made small, miserable noises in his sleep that made Bucky want to shove at his back to wake him all the way up.

_No wonder he looks so tired all the time,_ Bucky thought, and as he pulled into the rest stop after Augusta, he wished he could let Sam sleep.

Sam slammed into wakefulness as Bucky turned the car off, sitting up so fast Bucky’s jacket fell off into his lap. He looked down at it in bemusement, then up at Bucky.

“You looked cold,” Bucky said gruffly, and Sam looked at him for so long that Bucky got embarrassed and nearly got out of the car before remembering how visible they were together, the two of them. That was the whole point of stopping. He said, “You’re gonna get out on my side, like you been driving, okay?”

Sam rubbed at his eyes. “I’m missing something.”

“Can’t go into Budapest together.” Bucky heard himself pronounce it wrong, and tried again, the American way. “Budapest. Budapest. You go in, get a hotel room, scope out the town. I’ll meet up with you after. You got a cover in mind?”

“Shit, man, I didn’t even think to— They got any conferences nearby? Bangor, anywhere like that? I could be staying—”

Bucky tried to be patient. “Bangor’s too far. Tell ‘em you want to buy a house, you and your wife. Give you a good excuse to go looking around town, asking a lot of questions, okay? Come on, we gotta move.”

He glanced up, and caught a pair of eyes flashing at him from the inky blackness, _fuck,_ and he threw out his arm to push Sam back down on the passenger seat, rolled to cover him and protect his own head. Waited for the hail of bullets.

Nothing.

“Barnes,” said Sam.

“Shut up,” Bucky whispered urgently. “I saw something.”

It was dark, but still Bucky could see the softness in Sam’s eyes, the curve of his lower lip. Husky-voiced, Sam said, “Probably an animal, Buck. Want me to get out and look?”

“ _No._ Shut up.”

Bucky’s jacket was caught between their bodies, the zipper digging into the skin of his stomach where his shirt rode up a little. Beneath him, Sam was holding very, very still, the still of a trapped animal, his breathing shallow, the fingers of one hand wrapped loosely around Bucky’s wrist. “I promise I won’t hurt you,” Bucky whispered. “I promise, okay. It’s me. It isn’t—it’s me, still.”

“I _know_ that. Get off me, it’s a rabbit or something, okay?”

Bucky got off, and they looked out the windshield. A doe blinked back at them, and Bucky couldn’t look at Sam. He muttered, “Sorry.”

“For what, trying to take a bullet for me? You don’t have to be sorry.” Sam folded Bucky’s jacket in half and settled it on his lap, rubbing the leather of the collar between two fingers. He looked—something. Discomfited, fiddling with Bucky’s jacket. And he had slept badly and muttered nonsense words in his sleep, and Bucky didn’t want to push him, make things worse, so he gave up on trying to do this fast.

“Sit tight a sec,” Bucky said.

Getting out of the car wasn’t as hard as he’d thought—drop and roll, not too bad, even if it did scare the stupid deer away, and then he was at the fringes, in the dark, where the asset had worked best, those later years, as it forgot more and more how to pretend to be human.

One of the cameras was broken, anyway, and the other one—only two, really?—was flimsy. Bucky waited for a bird to fly in front of it, then threw a rock at it, knocking the lens away to point sadly at the ground. Easy as pie.

For fun, he snuck up on Sam’s car and jumped straight onto the roof, and Sam yelled “Whoa!” and Bucky burst out laughing and rolled himself back inside, barreling halfway over the gearshift and into Sam. After a stricken second in which Bucky was afraid he’d messed up, Sam laughed too, folding his arms over his stomach and bending forward with it.

The yellow, faded streetlight shone against the back of his neck, the bumps of his spine. It did something funny to Bucky’s heart. How brave of Sam, to bare his neck like this, knowing the Winter Soldier could snap him, break him. “I broke the cameras,” he said finally. “So you could rest if you want.”

Sam sobered at once. “I don’t need you to—don’t baby me, Barnes. We’ll do what we need to do. Sounds like you put a plan together, so tell me what that looks like.”

Bucky ran him through it. Together, they were conspicuous, and Bucky was conspicuous anywhere. Sam would go into town solo, pretending to be looking at houses up there with an eye to maybe buying one. Bucky would follow on foot, keep a low profile, not be seen, and he’d break into Sam’s hotel room and join him. From there they’d talk about what to do next.

“Uh, no?” said Sam.

Bucky bristled. “I can break into shit without messing it up.”

“No, I mean, you don’t have a phone. How’m I supposed to get in touch with you if something goes wrong? Or shit, how am I gonna tell you what hotel?”

“I’ll _find_ the hotel.” He wasn’t stupid.

Sam sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We gotta have a backup plan.”

The backup plan was always the asset killing everyone. Sasha would slide his hand down the asset’s metal arm like it was the barrel of a gun, and he would say, “Well, the asset can take care of everyone, can’t you, love?”

It was a joke. Bucky made it to Sam and added, “That’s a joke. It’s not going to kill anyone.”

Sam’s hands clenched in the lining of Bucky’s jacket. “You mean you,” he said, voice low.

“Huh?”

“You meant you,” said Sam, “when you said— The asset is you.”

“Yeah?” Bucky said, bewildered.

“That’s—” Sam looked straight ahead, eyes bright in the light from the streetlamps. His mouth was pulled tight and small. “Fuck, Barnes.”

Bucky took his jacket back from Sam, just to have something to do with his arm. When he grabbed for it, inhumanly fast, he expected Sam to flinch. Wanted him to. But Sam looked straight ahead, quiet and still. After a little while he said, “Let’s pick a landmark. Meet there if anything goes wrong.”

“Okay,” said Bucky. He still wasn’t sure what he had done wrong. Maybe talking about the asset was wrong. Sam did not want to know.

(Why would he? Bucky didn’t want to know himself, but there it was, in his brain, memories that would swirl and recede but that would come back suddenly in the night, all teeth and terror.)

“Meet back here?” said Sam. “If I don’t hear from you in twenty-four hours, okay?”

“Okay,” said Bucky.

They got out of the car. Bucky had done the wrong thing, mentioning the asset, and he wanted to fix it before they split up, but he didn’t want to apologize for the wrong thing and say something crazy and not-human and see Sam’s face drawn up all tense again. Instead he gave Sam a fast, rough hug and said, “À bientôt.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. He smiled at Bucky a little. “Be safe. Do the plan just like we talked about.”

“What else?” said Bucky.

* * *

He followed Sam, of course, stayed close to the highway and kept track of Sam’s car. The asset would never have taken the risk of staying that close, of being seen. But then, the asset would have stolen a car, in the first place. It rarely ran. Bucky sometimes felt that since waking up, he’d done nothing but.

It began to rain.

* * *

Sam dicked around in Budapest so long after he got there—stopping in a twenty-four-hour drugstore, walking around town, ducking into the little town bookstore when it opened—that Bucky began to suspect Sam hadn’t trusted him to keep up with the car, and was trying to give him time to catch up.

(Honestly, what _did_ Sam think the asset did all those years? This was what Bucky was good at, this part.)

He gave Sam two hours at the hotel to sleep and then let himself into the room. Two hours was plenty. Sam was sleeping on one of the beds, blankets from both piled on top of him. Bucky tapped his shoulder and then scooted back and didn’t watch while Sam slammed awake. It wasn’t polite to see that, know that.

“Cold?” Bucky asked, when Sam’s breathing had gone back to normal.

Sam kicked his mountain of blankets aside and got out of the bed, stretching, deliberately casual. “Just at night. Found it okay?”

“Kept with the car.” Bucky wasn’t sure why he was explaining. “I run pretty fast. What were you dicking around town for?”

“Oh.” Sam jerked his chin at the chair beside Bucky’s bed. “Got you some clothes. Figured, with the rain. No boots, though. I don’t know your shoe size.”

Bucky crossed to the chair and peered into the bags there. Two were from the drugstore and contained various sweatpants and hoodies and t-shirts with names of sports franchises on them. A third was from the bookstore, and when Bucky got to that one, he could feel Sam’s attention shifting, behind him. Inside the bookstore bag was a slightly tattered copy of a fat book called _Lord of the Rings,_ and a blank notebook with marbled black-and-white covers.

Bucky turned around to Sam, eyebrows raised.

“Oh,” said Sam, as if he were surprised that Bucky had found it. “Yeah. I thought, yeah, I remembered you saying you kept a notebook. Stuff you— So. Thought you might need another one. Don’t go anywhere with _Lord of the Rings,_ though, man, that’s mine. M’gonna need something to read while we’re stuck here.”

Bucky looked down at the notebook. It was a present. Clean edges and white paper, and this would be how Bucky would thank Sam for it: He would never write a word about him, not a word from now until whenever he went back down in Wakanda. Let the government try to take this from him too, let Hydra come for him and haul him away in chains. He would not be the one to lead them to Sam Wilson. Never in this life.

He said, “Thank you.”

Sam shrugged and turned it into another stretch, obviously gearing up for something. Bucky braced. At last, Sam said, “So it sounds like most of the folks in town live up in the woods. Big houses on lots of land.”

“Good. You ask more questions in town, I’ll head up into the forest to do some recon.”

“No,” Sam said sharply.

Bucky looked up, surprised. Tentative, he said, “I can’t—it’s a bad idea for me to ask— We don’t want them to know we’re onto them. One arm, remember? It’s, uh. Memorable.”

“So’s a black guy in rural Maine, but it’s no either way. We can’t do the fucking recon.” Sam was tense all over, his mouth pulled small and his shoulders tight, and Bucky _did not fucking like it._

“We have to,” he said. “We have to do it, cause Steve—”

Sam slapped a hand against the headboard. Bucky jerked backward, and tried to cover the motion by leaning over to grab the pen from the bedside table and tucking it into his new notebook. Even though he was pretty sure Sam wasn’t fooled, Sam didn’t apologize. He said, “It’s fucking spring turkey season.”

Bucky was so relieved he almost laughed. “That’s okay!” he said. “Is that all? Shit, Wilson, I don’t give a fuck about that. That’s _fine._ I’m not going to be—that’s great actually! I’ll steal a gun somewhere—”

“ _No._ ”

“—okay, fine, I’ll _buy_ a gun, you’re no fun, bird-boy, I’ll buy a gun and that’ll be my cover. Great! Shit!”

For some reason, Sam was still tense. Worse, if anything. “You’re not going out there with a bunch of—flannel-shirted libertarians with— No. You shouldn’t have a cover, anyway. If you’re too conspicuous with one arm in town, you’re too conspicuous with one arm in the woods. You’re not doing it.”

“Okay, fine.” It wasn’t a bad point. Sleeping in Wakanda had made him rusty. “So I won’t let anyone see me.”

“You can’t dodge bullets.”

In his current mood, Sam probably wouldn’t like being reminded that Bucky healed from bullet wounds faster than just about everybody else alive in this world minus Steve. “I’ll be careful.”

“This is _my mission!_ ” Sam said, not quite yelling but nearly. “They’re firing guns out there, Barnes, you get that?”

“Why are you mad at me!”

“Because you’re being irresponsible!” Sam said. Shouted. “You think I want to tell Steve I let his best friend get shot out of the sky?”

Bucky opened his mouth, then shut it again. Sam’s chest was heaving. Cautious, Bucky said, “The sky?”

“Out of. Yeah, I mean—the, out in the forest.” Sam drew in a slow, shaky breath, and his eyes, when they caught on Bucky’s, looked so damn sad it made Bucky’s heart twist. “The forest,” he said again, and he said, “It’s not safe.”

What did people do, when other people were sad? Bucky couldn’t remember. What had he done when military recruiting offices turned Steve away? He thought he had probably gone weak with relief, knowing Steve was safe for another day, another week at least. _Think faster,_ he ordered himself. _Say something, fix it._

He said, “I’m not him,” meaning Stark’s friend, the other guy in the suit. The one who had fallen.

Sam laughed, a little. “No kidding.”

Bucky tried to think what else to say.

“Steve tell you?” said Sam. “What happened to Riley.”

Oh. “Yeah. That he—um, died. He told me.” (Not Stark’s friend, then.) “Was he—he do like Steve, just, take off, not take anyone with him?”

Sam sat on his bed, shoving blankets out of his way. “Nah. Nah. With Ri, me and him were a team. We were a pair. He pushed for us to be the ones trying out the wings, going in quiet and clean. And he was—yeah, him in the air, it was like he was supposed to be a bird all along. He goddamn owned the sky.” His eyes were fixed on something far away, the dead Riley.

_Until?_ Bucky didn’t ask. His fingers rubbed at the rounded corners of his new notebook.

“But.” Sam’s eyes came back to Bucky, to now. “So, he fell. I couldn’t get to him. So that’s.”

“I won’t fall.”

Sam smiled. When he smiled, his cheekbones were thrown into prominence, and Bucky imagined pressing his thumb into the hollow it created in Sam’s face. Boop.

“Now correct me if I’m wrong,” said Sam, and he somehow had put his sadness aside and it was gone from his face and how did he _do_ that? “But aren’t you the guy who’s famous for falling?”

Bucky barked a laugh, surprised, and rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide it. “Fuck off, Wilson. And what’s this Lord of the Rings shit?”

“Hey,” Sam said. “You keep Tolkien’s name outta your mouth, grandpa. That’s a fuckin’ classic of fantasy literature, and when you get back here from scouting out the forest—and that’s gonna be two hours from now or I’m assembling the Avengers—you’re gonna sit still and learn something.”

The Avengers were gone, couldn’t be assembled. The Avengers—

Bucky was slow, sometimes, to understand what regular humans would catch at in an instant. He held still, waiting for Sam’s words to click in, and wait, wait, wait—and there. There it was. Sam meant that he wasn’t going to yell anymore. He meant that Bucky’s plan was the right one and they should do it.

“Two hours,” said Bucky.

“Two hours,” said Sam.

* * *

After all that fuss, Bucky only saw three turkey hunters, and he kept out of their way. They mostly stayed put, sitting up on a ridge, backs against trees, making little chirruping yelp noises. One of them had a tiny little tent thing with a flap window. Stupid-looking, Bucky thought.

Another one had an aerial map, and that was a pretty good idea, in Bucky’s opinion. Maybe Sam could pick up some of those in town, get a look at what there was out here. Each house was on a shit-ton of land, a lot for Bucky to cover in two hours, especially if he was careful not to be seen, and Sam had said to be careful of that. He scouted out six houses altogether. Two were, or appeared to be, unoccupied, and Bucky broke into one of them—might as well, and he didn’t have enough time to do both—to get a sense of the typical layout and to check for Steve.

No Steve. Lots of guns, rifles, locked up safe in a safe. If Sam hadn’t been pissed about the idea of stealing, Bucky would have stolen one, or a couple, and some ammo. He felt better when he had weapons.

Sam could have given Bucky a weapon, back in Wakanda. And he hadn’t. And it wasn’t that it had to mean something, but in Bucky’s experience, what people gave you when you woke up meant pretty much everything.

He stole a kitchen knife and some duct tape. And a screwdriver.

Which if you thought about it was pretty fucking restrained.

* * *

The cleaning crew was out in force when Bucky got back to the hotel, which got him in Sam’s hotel room five minutes after the two hours were up. “Sorry,” Bucky called, from the foyer.

Sam’s head whipped around, and Bucky winced at the sight of him. His eyes were rimmed with red, like.

Like. “What,” Bucky said. “What happened. Did something.”

“Nothing,” said Sam, voice even, but that was a lie: Bucky already knew that Sam kept his voice set to steady, that he didn’t like showing weakness (or didn’t like showing weakness to Bucky, maybe). “Just tired, man. Hey, you’re pretty prompt, that army training, huh?”

“Yeah. What happened?”

“Some stuff catching up to me. Nothing, okay? Nothing you need to worry about.”

Bucky pointed out, “You took care of me at the gas station.”

“I squatted next to you at the gas station.”

“So it’s only fair. Or we aren’t partners and it’s your mission and I’m just a weapon.”

Sam laughed. “Pretty sneaky, Barnes.” He reached out as if he were going to touch Bucky’s shoulder, but he aborted the movement and faced his palm at Bucky. Bucky matched his hand to Sam’s, fingers and thumb. They held it that way for a moment, and they let go.

“Learned from the best,” Bucky said. He was out of breath, a little.

“This, uh. It’s bringing up some stuff. You know how that goes?”

Yeah, Bucky knew how that went.

“So that’s all it is,” said Sam. “So, sitrep.” Tucking his sadness away, tidy as hospital corners, he sat down on his bed and bounced a little, testing the springiness of it. Bucky sat down next to him, lining his human shoulder up against Sam’s and pressing into him. The less it looked like comfort, he thought, the likelier Sam would accept it.

“Six houses, four with people home,” Bucky said. “Broke into one of the unoccupied places.” He paused, watching Sam out of his periphery.

“No Steve?” was all Sam said.

“No Steve. Couldn’t break into the other place but I’ll go back later. After dark maybe, if the hunters are gone. S’a family in one of the houses, parents and two teenagers. The other ones had all adults, but I couldn’t get a good look at them. Lots of blinds. All seemed pretty normal, people fixing lunches. Didn’t hear anyone saying—I mean I couldn’t hear words, but the way their voices were, that was all pretty regular.”

Sam closed his eyes. “Fuck.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “You? You go into town?”

“No, I—” Sam ducked his head, rubbed at the back of his neck. “I mean, yeah, I went into town but I didn’t—like we talked about, act like I was looking for a place. I didn’t have it.”

That, Bucky understood. Some days, no matter how good you had become at lying, at pretending to be fine and to move through this world like regular and to talk like you were people, some days you didn’t have it. Some days, the bad shit would not let you set it aside. “S’okay. We gotta get lunch anyway. We’ll try again some other time, right?”

Sam shrugged the shoulder that pressed up against Bucky’s. “Guess so. Hey, Barnes, quit being so nice, you’re gonna ruin me for combat.”

“Who said I want you in combat?” teased Bucky.

Sam turned to him, surprised eyes at the joke, and they were close enough that Bucky could press his lips to the bridge of Sam’s nose, if he wanted to. “Who made you the commanding officer anyway,” said Sam.

Here was a James Buchanan Barnes thing that stood clear as crystal in Bucky’s memory. Boil James Buchanan Barnes down to his essence, and this would be what remained, this feeling of protectiveness, helpless and entire. Once he had held Steve (his Steve) and they had—what had they done? He remembered the racking sound of Steve’s coughs, the pallor of his skin, and Bucky had held him, for warmth and because he loved him, and they had, what?

“I used to read to Steve,” said Bucky.

“Yeah?”

“If one of us felt low.” Bucky nudged at Sam’s shoulder. “Could read you that book. Your dumb rings book.”

Sam tipped his head forward, and it might have been Bucky’s imagination that he tucked himself a little, a very little bit into the curve of Bucky’s arm. “Aw man,” he said. “You’re just showing your ignorance with that.”

But that was what they did. Sam got food for them, and they switched out reading and eating, and Bucky couldn’t decide which he liked better, the reading or the listening. When Sam read, his voice was warm and sure, the voice of a man speaking to the one he loved best in all the world; and he flicked glances at Bucky when he paused between sentences, gauging his reaction.

When it was Bucky’s turn to read, Sam lay on his back and shut his eyes, and his mouth curved into a smile when Bucky read the parts that were funny. It made Bucky want to keep reading, even though he didn’t care about any of these people in their warm comfortable beds with their warm comfortable lives.

He liked the wizard least. Gandalf. Coming in, taking things that belonged to the hobbits, knowing everything and expecting blind obedience.

“Well, he knows more,” said Sam, when Bucky paused to say this to him.

“Well that’s not.” Bucky stopped, trying to sort through his ideas. “Only cause he doesn’t tell. Doesn’t tell them the stuff, all what he knows, and that’s how come he knows more, right? So it’s still not fair for him to come to their houses and make them do what he wants.”

Sam twisted up on the bed to look at Bucky’s face. What he saw there must have satisfied him, because he lay back against the bed. “I like him. Dude knows how to get shit done.”

Bucky laughed, and Frodo Baggins set out on a journey.

* * *

Steve dreamed that he was with Tony again, and Bucky. Tony clutching at his hands, saying his name. “Run,” he sobbed at him, tried to. “Tony, God, get yourself out, don’t let them—”

Oh, God. Oh, God, he hurt, it hurt in every line of him, burned him from the inside out, worse than ice, worse than fire, worse than cattle prods, worse than anything he’d ever—

—he could not bear it—

Bucky’s eyes were on him. Steve couldn’t read what was in his eyes.

“Sweetheart, baby, Steve,” Tony choked, “oh God you’re—no, no, we’ve got you, baby—”

When he woke up, his eyes burned with tears. The dream had hurt more than anything they’d done to him, and he still wanted it back. Tony had been there, Tony had called him sweetheart. The woman was yelling something furious, and the man with the reedy voice was defending himself hotly. “This is _how_ you get results, you stupid fucks, and it’s not like he’s going to—”

(Who was Bill Maher? Steve had heard the name before, hadn’t he?)

“I’m going to,” Steve said, and he threw up.

“See,” said the woman.

“Clean him up,” the reedy man said. “Are those handprints?”

“I’m a neurologist,” said the woman, “not your fucking maid.”

(Good, thought Steve, dizzy, through a haze of pain and nausea. He could work with that, too. One of the guards had a daughter, and the woman wasn’t getting any respect.)

“Act like a scientist and you’ll be treated like one, sweetheart,” said the man. “Haven’t seen any fucking success so far.”

“It’s memory-based,” the woman said, shouted. “So you can’t—”

Something tickled at the edge of Steve’s mind, something important. He shut out the voices of the people who were experimenting on him and chased after it. When he was down in Tony’s lab, curled up on Tony’s couch waiting for him to finish—

God, his smile, his smile when he looked at Steve.

—and Tony would throw something across the room, furious at his own failure. When Steve would rub his shoulders, ease out the tension in him, and Tony would talk to him, and Steve didn’t understand one word in three. Those times, Tony would work something out, an important something, and he’d make jokes about being fucking stupid for not figuring it out sooner, and Steve would say, thinking it out helps. Laying out the steps.

Memory-based, she had said. Memory-based, and what else. Memory-based, and the man with the reedy voice knew Tony, disliked him. _His whole thing going with his cute little acronym,_ which meant the thing Tony called the Groundhog Day Machine, which meant BARF, the video demonstration of which Steve had watched ten times and every time he’d wanted to go down to the lab and wrap Tony up in his arms and never let go of him—

Not Bill Maher. Villemaire.

“What’s he laughing at,” said the reedy-voiced man. Villemaire.

“Dr. Stark,” Steve said. “Dr. Stark is going to fucking destroy you.”

* * *

He’d been—where? Tanzania maybe, because he remembered he’d been turning shilling coins over in his fingers and thinking about visiting Bucky. Someone’s phone was ringing, playing a tinny version of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Steve looked around for whoever it was, to make sure they would answer it, and realized almost too late that it was his. Tony’s. The phone he’d given Tony the number to. 

He answered it fast. “Tony?” he said, desperate.

“Whoa,” said Tony. “Stand down, soldier.” His voice was—warm, and nice, the way it sounded on those rare occasions when he would admit to liking Steve.

“Not an emergency?”

“Not an emergency,” Tony agreed. “I could use a hand, though. You up for a trip to California? My treat.”

“Can I see you?” said Steve.

A long silence.

“No,” Steve said. “Wait, it’s—sorry, I shouldn’t—it doesn’t matter, Tony, okay? It’s yes either way, just—I miss you. I wanted to ask. What’s in California?”

“An old friend.” Tony sounded normal, still, but a little more distant than he had a moment before. “And when I say friend, I mean ridiculous fucking ankle-biting rich sack of shit. This kid Villemaire, someone told him once he was his generation’s Tony Stark and he ran with it.”

“Pretty sure there’s just one of you,” said Steve, without thinking.

Another long silence. Then, “Small mercies, right? So this kid, he’s what, twenty years younger than me? Handsome as fuck, it’s all very annoying, but he copies anything I do, so he’s been dicking around with clean energy and memory mod for years.”

“Okay,” Steve said. (Keep it simple. When he tried to say more to Tony, he screwed it up.)

“Okay,” said Tony. “So yeah, turns out he’s contracting with a private prison in California to deal with their prisoner transfers. Tosses a drug in them to wipe out their memories every few minutes, keep them placid and confused, drop them at the new location with hours missing from their heads.”

Steve shuddered. “That can’t be legal.”

Tony made a clucking noise with his mouth.

“Tony,” said Steve. “Is that legal?”

“Well.” He drew out the vowel. “Call it a soft and malleable no. If anyone could prove it was happening, then sure, the FDA wouldn’t allow use of an unauthorized drug on prisoners in state custody. Problem is, I’ve put a not-inconsiderable amount of money into getting press for this, and I’m coming up blank. If anyone knows about it, they’re not talking. The formula for the drug exists, but as far as anyone can prove, it was dropped after the FDA banned it.”

“So how do you know about it?”

“I know everything.”

“Like I don’t know that. I meant how did you learn this specific thing? You know, to add it to your complete body of knowledge?”

Tony laughed, God, his laugh. “I really miss you sometimes, Steve.”

The breath whooshed out of Steve. When he could speak again, he said, “Tony, I miss you too. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever. I know about it because of corporate espionage. Just one of the many ways soulless billionaires enrich themselves at the expense of the common man, Cap. It’s definitely going on, but I can’t prove it and Iron Man can’t intervene without giving Uncle Sam the perfect excuse to send the UN poking around in my business under the Sokovia Accords, which I don’t want them to do. So.”

Steve tried to think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound like _I told you so._

“Do not say you told me so.”

“I wasn’t.”

“I am very fucking well aware that the government is a flawed instrument.”

“I know that,” said Steve.

“We shouldn’t have unlimited power. People shouldn’t. You, Sam, me—God, I’m the last person. You get that I’m saying this about myself? It’s just, sometimes, there are things the government can’t—”

“Tony, I know.”

“That doesn’t negate what I—”

“You don’t have to do this,” Steve said.

Tony drew in a breath that sounded like it hurt.

Before, Steve would catch a flash of sadness in Tony’s eyes—often, too often—and he would wrap him up in a hug. Tony would be tense against Steve at first, and he would say “I’m fine,” and Steve would say, “You can be fine and still get a hug,” and Tony would laugh and relax a little, and Steve would feel like he had won the lottery.

“Tony,” said Steve, now.

“Yeah.”

“We don’t have to have this fight again. I’m not—you don’t have to admit anything to me, to get me to help with this. I never thought you thought the Accords were perfect.”

“No,” Tony said. “No. You thought I wouldn’t help you, that’s all. You thought I’d let them murder Barnes, you thought I’d imprison a friend for no reason—”

“She couldn’t leave the—”

“Not that you asked but I was trying to get her a fucking visa, _Steve,_ while protecting her from extradition to fucking Nigeria, which Sokovia had already green-lighted.”

“You didn’t tell me that!”

“You didn’t ask! God, you barely looked at me after Sokovia, and the Accords were—I’m so fucking stupid I thought I was doing what it would take to make you fucking respect me again—”

Steve made himself loosen his grip on the phone. “Sweetheart, I never—”

“ _Don’t._ ” His voice sounded raw.

It always came out this way, with Tony. No matter what Steve intended. He said, “I didn’t stop respecting you.”

“You stopped trusting me,” said Tony, painful.

“You _never_ trusted me,” and that was a thing Steve hadn’t known he’d thought, and it damn near choked him coming out, because that was true, wasn’t it? True, and his eyes stung with it.

“Oh bullshit.”

“I’m not talking about the team,” said Steve. He could hear his voice turning thready, but he had to get this out. “You didn’t trust me to, to care about you. Not to hurt you. You never—after Sokovia, I was mad at you but I thought we were going to talk about it, figure things out. And you disappeared. You didn’t ask me if I—you never ask. You just assume you know what I’m thinking. You think I’m so stupid I can’t—”

“I don’t think you’re stupid,” Tony said, milder now. “Are you crying?”

“No.” He wasn’t.

“I don’t think you’re stupid, come on.”

“You could have asked me,” said Steve. “The Accords. I’m great at diplomats. I could have helped.”

Tony sighed. “We were lobbying to—I didn’t want to drag you into it. You were so angry at me—Steve, come on, you were, and you were looking for Bucky, still. And it isn’t, it just is not right for us to operate without any oversight. All over the globe. This, this American strike team.”

Steve said, “Okay. We disagree. But I, can I just: I trust you. With my life. For what it’s worth.”

“Not with Bucky’s,” said Tony, who couldn’t let a damn thing go.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “Not with Bucky’s, and I wouldn’t trust him with yours, either. But I trust you with mine, okay? And that’s not something I’d say to a lot of people. So tell me what this mission is and I’ll do it because it’s right, and we can stop—Tony, _please_ can we stop doing this to each other?”

Tony was silent for so long that Steve checked the phone screen to make sure he hadn’t hung up.

“Tony?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll always help you. Any time you ask. Tell me the mission.”

Tony had drawn in another of those painful breaths (Steve quashed the urge to ask if he was sleeping at all), and they’d gone through the mission parameters. It was a two-part thing: Tony handling the technical side, Steve the punching. Villemaire had a lab in SoCal where he ran all the memory work (that would be Tony’s job), and a refrigerated storage center not far out where he maintained his supply of the drug in question (that would be Steve’s).

“Is that okay?” Tony asked.

“Is—yeah. Is what okay?”

“The cold, is that—cause if it’s not, you know, I can figure something else—”

“Tony,” Steve said.

“What.”

“Nothing, just. It’s sweet, is all. To worry. You’re sweet.”

“Not, um.” Was it Steve’s imagination, that Tony sounded a little overcome? “Not the prevailing opinion, Cap.”

“Damn,” said Steve. “I’ll have to change, then. Conforming to the prevailing opinion is pretty important to me.”

Tony laughed. He really laughed.

(And Steve still couldn’t have him back.)

Come down to it, there wasn’t much to the job. The worst part had been coming back to the States, worrying about being identified, but Steve was used to that by now, the fake passport. He even answered to his fake name (James Edwards) without much trouble.

According to public records, Villemaire’s storage center was supposed to house archived employee records, not massive quantities of a drug specifically disallowed by the FDA. Steve didn’t have to blow up the whole thing, just one wing, and leave a mess of shattered bottles and, if he could possibly manage it, invoices. Enough for a police report (he placed an anonymous tip before heading over, which gave him a short window, but he was used to working on a clock). That would be the thread for Tony to start pulling.

They had always worked well together, the two of them. Even when they had first met, when it had seemed impossible that Tony would ever stop resenting Steve, they had been good together in the field.

Afterward, when Steve was safely out of the country, an anonymous whistle-blower leaked documents from Villemaire’s lab, along with the police report from the explosion, and an investigation was launched. Steve didn’t even have to send back the bottle of the drug that he’d swiped from the lab as a failsafe; he unscrewed the cap and upended it into the toilet.

He flew back to Wakanda right after, even though Bucky wasn’t awake for him to visit. The alternative was to stay in America, illegally, hoping that Tony would want—

There wasn’t any alternative.

They spoke on the phone two weeks later. Tony sounded worse, not better, and Steve didn’t know where to put that. “Are you sleeping?” he asked.

“Right now?”

“Tony.”

A long, dramatic sigh. “I’m sleeping enough.”

Tony had liked the idea of sleeping cuddled up with Steve, but the practice was too hot and gave them both nightmares. Steve slept hard and steady, unmoving, one hand resting on the back of Tony’s neck, and that was the compromise. It grounded them both. In the morning, when Steve went on his run, he pressed his lips to the place where his fingers had been, and sometimes Tony stirred and smiled in his sleep. God, Steve missed him. The smell of motor oil that lingered in his undershirts, the calluses on his fingertips. His smile, every one of his smiles.

“I worry about you,” Steve said.

Tony laughed like a bark, and his voice shook when he answered. “You. Worry about me. You—God, Steve, I don’t even know what to say to that.”

Say you’ll take care of yourself. Say you won’t work yourself into the ground, without me there to take the pen, the screwdriver, the aviation snips out of your hand and tuck you into bed and make you fall asleep.

“You never believe anyone gives a damn about you,” he said, instead.

Tony didn’t answer.

“Tony?”

“You don’t pull your punches, do you?” said Tony, ragged.

Steve rubbed his eyes. “I didn’t mean it as a punch. It’s—I hate seeing you do this to yourself. I worry about you, that’s not—you’re my friend and my, my, whatever we were doing when—and I miss you and I worry about you.” And because he was tired of lying and tired of pretending, he added, “I miss kissing you.”

So low that Steve would not have heard it without supersoldier hearing, Tony said, “I don’t know how to get back to—”

“I wasn’t asking you to—”

“You used to look at me like I was—”

Their words had overlapped enough that Tony might have stopped talking to give Steve the chance to finish, but Steve knew Tony. Inside and out he knew him. Whatever the end of that sentence would have been, _you used to look at me like I was_ anything, Tony wouldn’t say it out loud. Not if it was going to end ugly, and especially not if it was going to end nice.

“Anyway,” said Tony. He sounded exhausted. He always sounded exhausted, now.

_Because he’s doing your work, and Sam’s, and Wanda’s. Because you left the Avengers and it all fell to him._

Intentions didn’t matter. Consequences were what mattered. “Tony.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, just—stay on the phone with me, okay? Stay on the phone with me for a little while. I need, I just, I.”

“What do you need?” He had gentled. Steve knew he would. When Steve needed it, Tony could be gentle with him; he could be so tender it would tear your heart to pieces.

“Could you let me talk you to sleep?” Steve asked. “You sound—I hate hearing you sound so tired. Could you let me—”

“I don’t have time to sleep,” Tony said, very small.

This was the paradox: How Tony’s mind could be all that it was, generosity and vision and blistering brilliance, and always, always, some part of that same mind (that had saved the world and Tony’s life a hundred times over) (that Steve loved and admired) _always_ would be trying to kill him. Steve flinched away from the thought, but he could imagine it. A fast car after a party. Chasing a nuclear bomb into space. Pushing himself forever past his limits.

Just like that, Tony could be gone.

“You have to sleep,” said Steve. “Please. Call it my payment, how about. I helped you, so now you have to do what I want.”

That was cheating. Tony snarled at kindness, but he accepted commerce. If Steve hadn’t been desperate, if Tony’s voice had sounded only a fraction less frayed, Steve wouldn’t have stooped to it.

“Yeah, fine. Hang on, I’ll—okay, I’ll go upstairs. Jarv—Friday, can you— Okay, Cap, go ahead. Bore me.”

The game wasn’t to bore him, of course. It was to drown out the whir of his mind. Steve made his voice soft and sweet. “Went out to the Getty Villa while I was in LA. It made me think how someday decades from now people’ll visit the Tower like that, go for tours, look at the art.”

“Your Rodin hand,” suggested Tony.

“Your Rodin hand,” Steve corrected. It was an old argument, an old joke. “Yeah. But you like all that modern stuff, and these guys were into classical antiquity. It’s something to see, Tony, all the pottery they dug up.”

He talked about the Getty Villa, about the waterfront and the mountains, how he’d climbed to the very top of a mountain that had a school on it. Tony answered him less and less, sleepier and sleepier, and Steve talked soft. Walking down the line of the beach, all the people there, how he had expected it to be liked Coney Island, how it was the same and how it was different.

After Tony fell asleep, Steve stayed on the phone a long time, listening to him breathe.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Tony gets hacked and Steve gets moved

Sam Wilson slept for shit, and by now it was genuinely pissing Bucky off. Sam kept waking up with that stupid, battlefield jolt that the asset had had to be trained out of, and he woke up cold, padded around the room looking for extra blankets to pile up on himself. Then Bucky would wait for him to fall back to sleep, because Bucky couldn’t sleep if Sam wasn’t sleeping, and that took forever too, all the false starts and rolling over and curling up like a pill bug.

Bucky gave up and climbed into Sam’s bed.

“Hrngh,” went Sam, groggy.

“Shut up. I’m cold.” He slotted himself in behind Sam, under the small damn mountain of blankets, his nose pressed into Sam’s shoulder.

(If this was wrong, Sam wouldn’t hit him. He didn’t have to, he shouldn’t, think about that. Old reactions, junk reflexes.)

Darkness was for secrets, so Bucky said, “I like your stupid book. Go the fuck to sleep.”

Sam’s shoulders quaked with laughter. “S’the greatest book in the world, of course you liked it. Go to sleep yourself.”

One of them slept. It was easier now, with Bucky at Sam’s back, keeping him warm. If Bucky didn’t sleep, if it was a little too much, this closeness, at least his heart would not pound with fear. At least he would not sit up and glance over, his mind full of a question that wasn’t even really about Sam Wilson in the first place (it wasn’t). He would not sit up and glance over, if the answer to his question was curled safe under his human arm.

* * *

Bucky must have slept, because he woke up to the sound of Sam’s phone ringing, and the feel of Sam’s body slamming awake in his arms. Arm.

(Which. He couldn’t have held Sam with his metal arm, anyway, could he? Sam was Steve’s friend so Bucky had to take good care of him; and the metal arm was the asset, even if Bucky got to use it sometimes.)

“Hello,” said Sam into the phone. He was all the way awake, already swinging his legs over the side of the bed and sitting up.

“Tell Steve to go check on his cyborg,” said Stark’s voice on the other end.

Bucky tensed, and Sam glanced over his shoulder at him, mouthed “It’s okay.” “Check on Barnes? What’s happening, Tony?”

Tony.

“Probably nothing,” Stark said. “It’s probably nothing. Someone tried to break into my servers and pull out files on the Winter Soldier. They didn’t get much, if anything. Steve asked me to let him know if anything—”

Even Bucky could hear the bitterness in Stark’s voice.

“—came up relating to that. Uh. Area. But he’s not picking up his phone, so I guess I’m still persona non fucking grata. Maybe tell him it’s not very Captain American of him to hold a grudge. Maybe tell him my fucking—” Stark’s voice caught. “My mental issues aren’t his fucking—”

“Yeeeeeeah,” said Sam. “That seems like a conversation you’re gonna have him with directly.”

Stark sounded—

Bucky didn’t know how to feel about the way Stark sounded. It wasn’t what he expected from Stark, what he believed to be true about him. Sometimes, when he wanted to torture himself he looked up interviews, the survivors of people he knew the asset had killed. Stark more than most, because Bucky knew Steve worked with him and depended (somehow) on him. Always in those videos, Stark was exactly what Bucky thought he would be. Arrogant. Drunk, half the time, no surprise from Howard’s son; even Bucky had seen the way Howard Stark was heading.

Stark spoke of the Iron Man suit with the same pride and certainty that once he’d spoken of his other weapons. People didn’t change.

Now, Bucky could hear Stark’s breathing, unsteady on his end of the phone. Stark said, “It doesn’t matter. He always—God, it doesn’t matter.”

Bucky didn’t want this. To know that Stark cared about Steve.

“You can tell him,” Bucky muttered.

“Hang on a sec,” said Sam, into the phone, and to Bucky, “Which part? You, or—”

“Is Steve with you, is he—?” said Stark. Bucky couldn’t take the sound of his _hope._

Oh God don’t think of him bashing Steve to death. Don’t think of him tearing at the asset’s limbs, your limbs, don’t, God, please—

Bucky held up a hand flat to Sam. One. The touch of Sam’s skin. _Please,_ and Sam lined his fingers up to Bucky’s and Bucky said, “One.”

(Two: The blankets, thrown off by Sam, bunched into Bucky’s leg. Three: The air-conditioning, what there was of it, cool on his face. Four: The way hotel rooms smelled in the morning, soft and the tiniest bit musty. Five: Sam’s brown eyes, serious.)

“I’ll talk,” Bucky offered.

Steve would have said no, or at best, a cautious “You sure?” Sam tucked the phone under Bucky’s ear, but he didn’t let go of Bucky’s hand, their fingers laced together.

“This is Barnes,” said Bucky into the phone, adjusting it with his chin.

Stark said, quietly, “Oh,” and neither of them spoke, for a little while.

“I’m sorry I killed your parents,” said Bucky, “and if you try to hurt Steve again I’ll kill you, I don’t care that you’re important to him, I’ll fucking kill you next time.” He looked at Sam when he said this, ready to defend himself, but Sam just raised his eyebrows.

“You were brainwashed,” said Stark, “and the same goes for you, believe me, Barnes. If you go bugfuck, I’m not dicking around with stun blasts, I’ll take the head shot before you get anywhere near him.”

“He’d hate you.”

“So what else is new,” and that was what Bucky could not quite bear. Stark should have said, _He’ll hate you_ back. He should not have given up the argument, with that jagged edge of misery clawing through the steadiness of his voice. Bucky had felt, still felt, the way Stark sounded.

He had watched Steve fall, beaten, bloody, into the Potomac.

“We can’t find him,” said Bucky.

Stark said, “What?”

“Someone took him. Grabbed him out of the graveyard.”

“What?” said Stark, again, shakier.

“Steve is missing,” Bucky enunciated. “I thought you took him maybe but it wasn’t you, huh. So you gotta—we’re gonna be too slow.”

Sam tightened his fingers around Bucky’s, to make Bucky look at him, and shook his head. He whispered, “You don’t have to, Buck. I wasn’t asking—”

“You could help,” said Bucky in the phone. “Look stuff up for us maybe. Or you could track his phone maybe, or. Here’s Sam back.”

He tilted his head straight again for Sam to take it, but Sam didn’t grab it in time, and it fell into Bucky’s lap. He blushed and retrieved it and didn’t look at Sam.

“Hey, Tony,” said Sam into the phone. “Yeah, he’s—I woke him up to look for Steve.”

Sam’s voice, and then Stark’s. Sam, Stark, Sam, Stark. Bucky shut his eyes. If he could choose he would go back to last night, when there was no Stark and things were simple. Sam’s voice lulled him, telling him the story of hobbits and wizards, and elves in the forests of Mirkwood.

“Bucky, is that okay?” said Stark, and Bucky snapped back.

“Stark says,” began Sam.

“He can hear me,” said Stark.

Bucky didn’t like that at first—how could Stark know what his hearing was like?—except he realized of course, of course, Stark knew that because he knew Steve. “I wasn’t listening.”

Stark sighed theatrically.

“He wants you to go back to those houses,” said Sam, unwillingly. “Break in and check that Steve’s not there.”

“The occupied ones?” asked Bucky.

“The occupied ones?” said Sam to Stark.

“Every cabin in the woods within spitting distance of Budapest,” Stark answered. “If they’ve got him stashed—just check. I’ll hack Avis, find the customer name on your guy’s vehicle, and we’ll go from there. Two leads. Don’t worry, Bucky Bear, we’ll find him. Talk soon, Wilson.”

Sam tossed the phone on the bed and turned to Bucky. “I make you feel like you had to do that? Bring Stark in? Was that for me?”

“No.” Bucky could see the lines of tension in Sam, though he didn’t exactly understand what he’d done wrong. Would yes have been the correct answer?

(It had been easy, once, to be human.)

“You lying to me right now?”

Bucky’s eyes flicked up to Sam’s. “Were him and Steve. You know?”

“They.” Sam’s face changed, again. There was so much that he kept hidden, protecting himself or Steve or Stark or Bucky, and Bucky didn’t know him well enough to know what it meant, the different angles of his face. “You sure you want to hear this?”

“Yeah?” said Bucky, confused.

“They were dating, yeah.”

Bucky turned the idea of it over in his head. From Stark’s voice, the desperation there, it wasn’t a surprise. In the old days, way way back, the James Buchanan Barnes days, he could remember just distantly the sound of his own voice. Begging Steve to be careful, and Steve would glance up at him through those pretty fucking eyelashes and he’d say “I don’t start fights, Buck,” which was a blatant lie and they both knew it.

So it was familiar, the way Stark sounded. “Was Steve happy?”

“He—yeah.” Sam was watching him intently. “Yeah, he was.”

Bucky had expected it to hurt, maybe. It had hurt so much before he fell, the way Steve couldn’t look at him. How the two of them had been perpetually on the edge of fury with each other, and how quickly they had tipped into fighting. The _anger._ Bucky remembered that clear as day, because his mind would take everything good away from him without a second thought, but it always seemed to leave behind the memories that hurt. God, and he had been angry at Steve. For freely choosing what had been inflicted on Bucky without his consent, and for never looking back. But now it was like a scar, not even a scar. The person who had been hurt by it was gone.

“Stark thought he was going to kill him,” said Bucky.

“That a question?” Sam had shifted, a little bit, so the light caught his face at a new angle and cast one side of it into shadow. His eyes so serious.

“He wouldn’t’ve.”

All of a sudden, Sam was done with the topic. “Yeah, Barnes, he wouldn’t, but Tony Stark’s too fucked up to know that. Welcome to the fuckin’ Avengers shitshow.”

Bucky blinked, and nodded. Somehow, he’d pissed Sam off, asking this stuff. Maybe it was that Sam had wanted Steve himself, although Bucky didn’t like that idea and didn’t want to look too closely at why. He said, “Okay. I’m going to go break into houses.”

Sam wanted to object, you could see it in his eyes (he had pretty eyes). His friend had been shot down, Riley, and Sam was fucked up about it, so that changed the mission parameters. You adapted the mission for the tools you had. The asset had always known that, but Bucky—sometimes—forgot.

“I’ll text,” Bucky said. He hated texting. Even when he’d had the metal arm, it wouldn’t have been any good for texting, wrong amount of pressure, and it wasn’t designed for that anyway. With one hand, it was extremely fucking goddamn slow. Slowed him the fuck down, and speed was important. “I’ll do one house and text. ’Nother house and text. So you’ll know.”

Something flickered across Sam’s face. Not anger, but—

“Keep you apprised,” said Bucky.

And Sam smiled, that fucking smile, gap between his teeth, hollows below his cheekbones. The smile that made Bucky want to touch, press a finger to the corner of Sam’s mouth and slide upwards and back. Sam said, “Apprised, huh.”

“Apprised,” Bucky repeated, and he pulled one side of his own mouth up.

“Okay,” said Sam. “Okay, you do that. I’ll head to the library, pull addresses, send that to Stark. If we know who owns property around here, we’ll maybe have something else to go on.”

Bucky didn’t know what _pull addresses_ meant, but knowing who owned property would be good. Maybe they’d get lucky, and there’d be a match between the rental car information and the records on who owned what. “Была́ не была́,” he said.

“Hope that means good luck.”

“It does for Russians.”

* * *

_Spitting distance_ could mean a lot of things, but Bucky let it mean close enough that he could run there without tiring out or needing to stop for food or water. He broke into the other unoccupied house near town first, the one he hadn’t tried yet. No guns in this one. Bucky took a can of soup away with him, to eat while he was looking at the other cabins, and realized too late that he didn’t have the metal arm with him, to open the can. He considered just opening it with his flesh hand, but with his luck he’d cut himself on the edge of it, and Sam wouldn’t like it, the blood, even though he knew how fast Bucky healed.

(When had anyone but Steve given a damn if Bucky hurt himself? The asset—

Don’t.)

He had to head back closer to town to text Sam, didn’t get any signal in the woods. Nuisance.

_Two empty houses clear,_ he texted, and Sam wrote back, _You come get me if you find something, don’t you go in by yourself._

Bucky didn’t answer. He wasn’t going to promise that and he wasn’t going to lie.

The first of the occupied cabins had a family in it, kids’ voices, so Bucky broke in downstairs, the basement. He fucking hated basements. Travel the whole world and no matter where you went, you always ended up in some dirty stone-floor basement with your lip bleeding where Sasha had hit you. This one had sleds, lots of old toys. Plenty of things that could be weapons, but nothing that had been designed for it.

_Except me,_ thought Bucky, his mouth twisting into a smile he wouldn’t have wanted Steve or Sam to see.

Four bedrooms. Den, where the family clustered, watching TV, the older boy on his phone, the younger one cuddled up in his mother’s arms. Bucky watched them a little too long through one of the windows.

_Three clear,_ he texted to Sam.

Four: A man and a woman, mad at each other, then fucking in the upstairs bedroom. Good distraction. No Steve.

Five: One of the turkey hunters, Bucky recognized him, the only one from the other day who’d seemed like he had a shot at bagging a turkey. He looked tired and moved around his house unpredictably, no patterns to make it easy for Bucky to break in. Bucky caught a rabbit and let it loose in the living room, and crept in while the turkey hunter was dealing with that. No Steve.

Six: Too many fucking people for a good sweep. Maybe someone’s vacation weekend. Bucky did a visual sweep of the exterior and looked in the basement for good measure. No Steve.

When he got out his phone to let Sam know, he had a text message. _Stark knows who has him. Come back when you can._

* * *

Steve woke up.

They’d moved him. He was somewhere new, somewhere with different acoustics and a different smell, and the fact that he was only noticing it now meant that he’d lost time. They’d drugged him to make the transfer. Was the other guy here too, the other captive?

(Steve knew there could be more than one, but that was too much to take on, for now. One other captive, and himself. That much, he knew for sure.)

New place meant new neighbors, maybe new rules. He started yelling at the top of his lungs, every swear word he could think of—which, since he’d spent the bulk of the last few years hanging around with Tony Stark, was quite a litany. Didn’t even take them five minutes to respond. The reedy-voiced man—who must be Villemaire?—was the first one to the room, and he said “Shut the fuck up, Jesus Christ,” and hit Steve in the face.

“Hey!” said the other man, the one Steve thought was from Africa. Of the three of them, he was the most discreet. Steve hadn’t heard his voice in days.

“Keep him quiet,” spat Villemaire. “Get Anna in here, Jesus Christ.”

Anna said, when she came in, “Are you sure? We were going to try—”

Steve threw himself against the restraints and screamed.

“I’m sure!” Villemaire yelled.

They drugged him after that: sedation, not the complex procedure that threw him into those vivid, painful dreams that were and were not his memories. But Steve had a name. Anna. Villemaire, and Anna; and wherever they’d moved him to, it mattered now if Steve made noise. Those were things worth being sedated to find out.

And he had learned this, too: They needed him conscious, to do their experiments. So the game was to make them sedate him as much as possible, to stop them from learning anything more from him. Maybe then they’d change something about his routine. Alter the dosage of whatever they were giving him to stop the serum from working properly. Move him to a new location without the full effects of the sedation.

Anything.

On the second day in the new location, Steve slipped his blindfold a little bit trying to bite when they made to adjust one of the sensors on his head. If he tilted his head back, resting it, he could see a little of the machine they’d put next to him. It didn’t look anything like Tony’s memory machine, but he guessed the similarities couldn’t be too close or there’d be patent issues.

(“You know where they try patent cases, Steve?” Tony had said to him once.

Steve had thought it was a joke, and paged through possible punchlines. Patent leather. Patently obvious. Captain Obvious. “Where?”

“Marshall, Texas,” said Tony, disgusted. “Population 24,000, and I swear to fuck half of that’s patent lawyers.”

Not sure if there was a joke that he’d missed, Steve had asked Jarvis about it later. It wasn’t a joke. Tony’s legal team had been to Marshall, Texas, more times in the past fifteen years that you could shake a stick at. The third millennium was a weird one.)

“Dr. Stark’s very impressed by good tech,” said Steve, to Anna. They were alone in a room together, and Steve was thinking about Ana Jarvis, who had been kind to Tony when he was small.

Very few people had been kind to Tony, when he was small.

Anna didn’t answer.

“Very,” Steve said. “Stark Industries employs some of the greatest scientific minds of our generation. It’s an incredible team, and because of Dr. Stark’s history, his hiring committees tend to be more understanding about—” He paused, deliberately. “Nontraditional backgrounds.”

“Criminal, you mean,” said Anna.

The wet squish of a syringe being filled. Steve had figured out they must have a PICC line in him, maybe more than one, to make it easy to pump him full of whatever poison they were testing on him.

“That’s right, Anna.”

Something dropped, and Anna swore. Hearing her own name had rattled her. “You don’t know me,” she said.

Well, true enough. He knew her name, and that Villemaire was a terrible employer. He’d known one of those things, more or less, before they took him. This was the worst he’d possibly ever been at being kidnapped. When he got home he would say to Tony, “I’ve been underestimating scientists as villains,” and Tony, Tony would laugh and push him down on the bed—

No, he wouldn’t. Steve couldn’t pretend that.

“I don’t,” Steve said. “And I’m sure Mr. Villemaire has gone through his plan for your legal protection for when this goes bad.”

“Yes,” Anna said, too quickly. “Of course. Of course he has. Yes.”

“Well, good,” said Steve. “Good. I’m glad to hear it. I’d hate to see the people who—and I’m going out on a limb here—corrected all of Villemaire’s math, ran all his preliminary experiments, and analyzed all his results go to prison while Villemaire cuts a deal with his friends at the Attorney General’s office. That would be a damn shame.”

The thing about manipulation was this: If you were holding a good hand of cards, it didn’t matter if the other person knew you were manipulating them. It worked anyway. When Tony Stark was your ally, with his bottomless resources, that was good for a straight flush in just about every game you played.

Anna said dryly, “Thanks for the offer, Captain America.”

“Don’t believe I made one,” said Steve. He rested his head back on the headrest and peered out from under it at the terminal where Anna was working. She had brown hair, pulled back in a low ponytail. He couldn’t see enough to get a look at her face, and he didn’t want to. If she caught his eyes under the blindfold, she’d pull it back down, and then he’d have nothing.

She hit a green button and—

* * *

Steve woke up. He was standing in an alley in downtown Manhattan, a place dark enough and sufficiently unpopulated that he could prop himself up against a wall and wait for his head to stop spinning, without eliciting comment.

There was blood on his arms, and he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

A door slammed on the street, and Steve looked up and saw himself—this was so weird—getting out of a cab. He leaned back against the wall, but his past self wasn’t looking. Past Steve had a smile on his face like he knew a secret, and he turned back around to hand Tony out of the car too. Tony’s hand, in Steve’s, was bandaged, and his eyes were wary.

God, yes, he remembered this night. Their first date. He’d held Tony’s hand during the dessert course, and afterward they’d kissed in the elevator. Later that night, they would fall asleep in each other’s arms, and when Steve woke up the next morning, he would feel like he was flying.

He slid down the wall, pulled his knees up to his chest, and waited. In a few hours, they would come back out. Tony would be smiling up at him, bumping into him on purpose as they walked to the cab, tipsy from the bottle of wine they’d split, his eyes a little brighter than usual, his shoulders more relaxed. Back in the Tower, Steve had curled his body around Tony’s legs and fallen asleep to the feeling of Tony’s fingers in his hair.

He wanted that Tony back, and that Steve.

His head felt heavy. His eyelids.

* * *

Steve woke up. He was in the Tower. They must have been refining the procedure, whatever it was, because the dreams were becoming more vivid, sharper at the edges, things to inhabit. Even the smell was exactly right. Coffee, clean laundry, metal, take-out. Natasha’s perfume and Clint’s cologne. This was home, family, everything he’d thrown away. His legs were jelly, and he leaned gratefully against the wall of the elevator as it went down, down, down. If he could see Tony, it would be all right.

He was dizzy. His legs wouldn’t stay where he put them.

His head wouldn’t—

The next thing he knew, Tony was standing over him. When Steve tried to scramble to his feet, his vision grayed out, and Tony didn’t catch his arms to help him stand. He clung to the side of the elevator until his head stopped spinning. His hands were sticky with blood, though he couldn’t remember being wounded. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, I—”

“What happened?”

“Bad dream,” said Steve. He started to laugh, weakly. “Bad damn—”

Tony punched him in the stomach. He had the suit gauntlet on that arm, and it doubled Steve over, knocked him to his knees. He looked up at Tony, whose eyes were cold.

“Don’t you ever,” Tony whispered, “you go back to who sent you and tell them their trick didn’t work. Steve Rogers isn’t even in the country, you cutrate criminal fucks, he’s a _wanted man,_ so you tell them: don’t ever try to come at me using his face. I will find you. I will fucking find you and I will start a fucking war.”

Steve said, “Tony?”

And Tony inhaled sharply like Steve had punched him, too.

And Steve woke up. His face was wet, and he was in the basement still.

“Whoa, what happened to him? Okay, _sorry,_ don’t give me the—” This was the woman. She didn’t take the precaution about silence seriously, which Steve suspected meant that she thought the precautions they’d taken to keep Steve docile were enough, and that it didn’t matter what Steve knew or guessed about his captors.

Might as well have another try at testing that theory.

“Let me go!” he bellowed, and threw himself against the restraints. (They couldn’t be leather, they _couldn’t_ be leather, he could _break_ leather.) “Let me go let me go let me go, you sick bastards, you fucks, I’m not your lab rat, let me _go._ I’ll kill you when I get out of here, I’ll take you the hell apart—”

Tony told him once that swearing was an analgesic. He had to look the word up. If it was an analgesic, it wasn’t working for him now. He was nauseated from whatever the procedure was to give him these dreams, these horrible vivid sickening dreams, and his arms and legs felt weak and rubbery. Even his stomach hurt, the remembered blow where Tony cold-cocked him in the dream. It reminded him of the years before the serum.

Oh, God, what if it was permanent? Whatever they’d done, what if it wouldn’t go away once he got out of this?

“What’s this fucking racket?”

He couldn’t tell the difference anymore between his memories and his dreams.

“I have no idea,” said the woman. “It was a standard—not even two weeks back. I don’t know where this is coming from.”

He couldn’t tell the difference anymore between the memories they induced and the ones that he let himself sink into. And now they were changing things, making new memories (or were they dreams?), where Tony hated him, didn’t trust him, fought him.

“Gag him,” said the man with the reedy voice. Villemaire. “Or knock him out, I don’t care. I can’t think with this kind of racket, and we’ll disturb the neighbors.”

Tony didn’t hate him. That was a lie, a trick for his memory. If Tony hated him, there were things he could do about that, amends he could make. The truth was worse, the distance between them. When Steve had come to New York, Tony was barely able to meet his eyes.

But the imaginary thing, the dream they’d forced on him, the lie, was colonizing his true memory of what had happened in New York. He could remember now that Tony had said, “Someone still knows you’re my weak spot. They sent a double.” He didn’t recall what he’d replied. How could he? It wasn’t real. Another dream memory.

As they gagged him, and tightened his restraints, he tried to remember New York. Every painful moment of it. Tony’s eyes. The tremor in his voice and hands that he’d tried to conceal from Steve. But he hadn’t said anything about meeting a double, because there had never been a double. That was a dream they’d given Steve.

What else would they take from him? What other memories would they replace with false ones?

“Jesus, is he crying?” said the woman. “You know what, let’s just—”

Bottles clinked, and Steve’s mind glazed over, and he fell and fell into darkness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which some things get drawn out in the open

When Bucky got back to the cabin, Sam had already packed his stuff into his duffel, his stuff and Bucky’s, and taken the sheets off the beds. He’d folded the comforters and pillows. It struck Bucky very clearly, suddenly, that Sam had not wanted his job on this mission to be information gathering. That he had wanted in the first place to be out in the field. Up in the air maybe, even. If he’d been Steve, Bucky would have seen it in him, that nervous energy, almost-but-not-quite-perfectly contained.

“Didn’t find him,” Bucky said unnecessarily.

“S’okay,” said Sam. “Stark’s gonna be here soon, he’s not far out, just New York. He’s coming in the suit. He said give it forty-five minutes.”

The drive from New York had taken them eight hours, and Sam was thinking about it now. Bucky was getting better at reading him.

“He could’ve told us this stuff,” Bucky said. “Before, if we’d—”

Sam’s eyes were fixed on something far away. “Could’ve.”

“If I’d let you call him.”

“Nah, I made the decision. Woke you up, left him out of it.” Sam shook his head, still looking at far-away nothing. “Last time I looped Stark in cause I thought things looked bad for Steve, it was—I made the wrong call. Didn’t want to do the same thing twice.”

“It’s all right,” said Bucky. “It wasn’t—”

“Wasn’t what?” Sam said. “Anything you need two hands for, Barnes?”

Bucky swallowed. Losing the arm had hurt, all the nerve endings, everything that he’d learned to use it for, but then— “Not my first time losing an arm. Not my third or fourth time, even.”

Sam laughed, not a real laugh, an ugly sound. “So as decisions go,” he said, “I’m on par with Hydra and a near-fatal thousand foot drop from a train, s’what you’re saying?”

They sat in silence. Sam shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the headboard, and Bucky didn’t know what to say to fix it. Lacking anything else, he fetched _Lord of the Rings_ off the side table and opened it up where they’d left off. “In the morning, Frodo woke refreshed,” he said, and looked over at Sam hopefully.

Sam didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t open his eyes but he smiled. “You don’t have to.”

“He was lying in a bower,” read Bucky, “made by a living tree with branches laced and drooping to the ground; his bed was of fern and grass, deep and soft and strangely fragrant.” He thought that bower sounded nice. Fern and grass, deep and soft.

This chapter was a little spookier, and Bucky kept glancing at Sam to check that his face still had that peaceful look. The hobbits were being chased by a dark figure, a shrill cry, a shadow from the West.

* * *

Stark walked into their room like he owned the place, which was good information to have, that Stark got a key to their room without probably too much effort, but Bucky was between Sam and the door so he made himself not react like the asset would have. Stark’s eyes caught on Bucky and Sam, Sam lying on his back, Bucky on his stomach, the book open in front of him. He said, “I—huh.”

“Hey,” said Sam, cautious.

The asset could hold still forever. Sam put a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, and Bucky shivered, and Sam took his hand away.

Stark was not wearing the suit. A gesture of good faith, maybe. “Did Sam brief you?” he said, not quite looking at Bucky.

“Yeah. You know who’s got him. Didn’t want to say it on the phone.”

“What are you reading?” Stark asked.

Rolling easily to a sitting position, his legs over the edge of the bed, Bucky looked Stark in the eye. “Who gives a fuck, Stark?” he said. No use pretending they were ever going to be best friends. Bucky’d brought Stark into this but that didn’t mean one damn thing except he thought Stark would help them find Steve faster.

“Not me for sure.” Stark’s eyes flicked to Sam, as if he was asking something.

“You wanna tell us who?” Sam asked.

Stark exhaled. “Yeah. It’s this kid Villemaire. I traced the rental car back to him. He’s using credit cards from a couple of shell companies deep, but it’s easy to follow once you know. Works in tech, if you can call it working. He’s—he hates me.”

_So it’s your fault,_ Bucky thought. He didn’t say it, because he hadn’t protected Steve, either, had he? This was what he had chosen for both of them, when he went down. Steve would die in battle, and Bucky would follow him into the dark. He wasn’t supposed to see Sam’s face twist in pain, or feel for Chrissake sorry for _Tony Stark._ “How come?”

“How come. He’s completely fucking amoral is how come. Likes to hire hotshot prospects right out of school, get them under predatory contracts when they’re too young and dumb to know better, then take credit for their work. You should hear Pepper talk about it.” Stark stretched his mouth out into a grim smile. “He likes to copy whatever I’m working on. I start with clean energy, he rolls out a clean energy department. I say I’m working on memory, he’s on memory twelve seconds later.”

“So those are the reasons you hate him.” Sam’s voice was real patient. Bucky’d heard him sound that way with Steve, and with Bucky himself, sometimes. The voice that was his job. Bucky bet he was good at it, before Steve and the Avengers dragged him away.

“I’m better,” said Stark baldly.

See. That was the Tony Stark Bucky recognized.

“I’m better and I’m smarter, and he’ll never catch up. That’s why.” Stark pressed the heel of his hand into one eye socket.

Bucky thought of pressing in with his thumbs. Stark would scream. An engineer needs his eyes, a soldier needs them. He could move fast enough, before Stark ever had a chance to stop him, or call the suit.

(The asset dreamed of corpses, _don’t_ )

“If I’m not losing my fucking mind,” said Stark, his voice slipping high and unsteady.

Sam said, “What does that mean?”

Stark’s eyes refocused, and Bucky reminded himself that it was no good feeling sorry for Tony Stark, and he didn’t feel sorry for him anyway. “Means I’m really fucking tired, that’s all.” Sam opened his mouth, and Stark raised his hand, the palm facing at Sam.

Bucky had Stark backed up against the hotel door in the next second, and Stark’s armor was half assembled—so much for good faith—before Sam yelled, “Stand down!”

_No,_ thought Bucky, thought the asset.

Stark’s chest, plated red and gold, rose and fell, and the scent of his fear was too familiar. Bucky let go of him and backed up, hand in the air so Sam could see he was following orders. Telegraphing every motion, Sam got between him and Stark, matched his hand against Bucky’s, aligned their fingers. It was familiar now. Soothing. One: Sam’s skin against Bucky’s. Two: The sound of Stark’s breathing, too loud in the small, quiet room.

“I’m okay,” Bucky said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’m fine too, thanks for asking.” Stark smelled like fear. He had panicked when Bucky put a hand on his chest. Bucky filed that information away for later, and hated himself because Steve had loved Stark, and maybe still did.

“The repulsors,” said Sam, explaining for Bucky. “Looked like you were firing repulsors.”

It pissed Bucky off—he didn’t know why exactly—and he took his hand away from Sam’s. Fuck counting sensations, anyway.

“I got that, bird-man.” Stark brushed imaginary lint off of his arm as the pieces of suit retracted back into his wristwatch. It wasn’t the full suit, Bucky saw now.

“We’re all a little on edge,” said Bucky. He made his voice match to the way Sam’s voice sounded when he was calming people down, and Sam and Stark both looked surprised. Bucky wondered if they’d read the files on the Winter Soldier. Stupid not to. The asset had always been a good mimic.

“Anyway,” said Stark.

“So he hates you,” Bucky prompted, and because he was already doing Sam’s voice, he made the kind of joke he’d have made to Sam. “Your competitors always spend their time kidnapping your exes?”

Stark could not have looked more astonished if Bucky had grown a tail and fangs. Sam snorted and turned his head away to hide his smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time, to be honest,” said Stark finally. “But it’s not, uh, I don’t think it’s related to that. I called Steve for a job. Villemaire was—doing some illegal shit, and I couldn’t get him on it. Steve helped. Could be because of that.”

“But you don’t think so,” said Sam.

(They had been on the edge of a fight, and Bucky had walked it back. He wondered if Sam had noticed, he wondered if Sam knew that Bucky had done it on purpose. He was not built only for fighting, whatever Steve believed.)

“I don’t. Or not just that.”

This was going to be the bad part. Stark was hesitating over it. Bucky waited.

“He rented the car,” said Stark. “Your red Hyundai. But he’s also who hacked into my system looking for the Winter Soldier files.”

Bucky shut his eyes. Of course the bad guy—of course Steve— “He’s bait. Steve’s bait for me.”

“I don’t know,” said Stark. For the first time since he’d gotten there, he met Bucky’s eyes. If he was lying, Bucky couldn’t tell. He wondered if the asset would have thought different.

But it would make sense. After he’d gone down, there wouldn’t have been any sign of him. The trail would have gone cold. The whole world had seen what Steve would do for Bucky. They had been best friends before anyone Steve knew in this new world had been born. If this guy Villemaire wanted Bucky, grabbing Steve would be the best way to find him.

Fuck, this hurt. It hurt to be human. To be vulnerable like this.

“Not much of a trail,” said Sam.

Stark nodded. “He might’ve assumed I’d help track Steve down.”

Why, though? Hadn’t the whole world _also_ seen that Tony Stark and Steve Rogers were enemies now?

“Why Maine?” Bucky asked. “For the rental.”

Stark slung his head to one side, and wow, that reminded him of Howard. If you’d asked five minutes ago, Bucky’d have said he didn’t remember Howard’s mannerisms at all, that he’d been happy to let Howard be Steve’s problem, but that head tilt. Pure Howard Stark. When Bucky had a chance, he’d write it in his notebook.

“What?” he said, because he’d missed whatever Stark’s answer was.

“I said contrary to popular belief I don’t actually know everything. Maybe cause Maine’s far the fuck away and he figured I wouldn’t, look, can we get back to civilization, please? Villemaire’s not fucking here.”

People weren’t Bucky’s thing but he thought maybe it was bothering Stark, not to know why Maine. He glanced at Sam, and Sam made a face like, _Whatcha gonna do?_

Stark did a “get up” motion with his hands. “Okay, Mac and Cheese, let’s head ‘em up and move ‘em out. I drove here in a dismayingly boring rental, and I’m going to drive it back to where I got it cause as we all know, rentals can be traced. Sam, I’m sending coordinates to your phone. Drive there and meet me, we’ll take a chopper back to my place, and Happy can follow us with your car.”

When they got back to New York, and Sam wasn’t in the room to stop him, Bucky would tell Stark to call Villemaire and offer a swap. The Winter Soldier in Captain America’s stead. The words to control him, even. Anything, fucking anything, to get Steve free.

Steve was accustomed to freedom. It did not singe his fingertips to touch it.

Bucky drove, not as fast as he’d have liked because he wanted to keep Stark’s car in his line of sight. He drove, and Sam read to him. The hobbits were stupid about fires. Easy to trace.

“There’s just this part that’s boring that I’m going to skip,” Sam said.

“That’s fine,” said Bucky. “I trust you.”

Sam’s eyes flicked up from the book, and Bucky carefully, deliberately steadied his breathing. When Sam spoke again, he sounded a little flustered. “Okay, yeah. They meet this, I dunno, forest dude named Tom Bombadil. You don’t need to know about it. If anyone mentions Tom Bombadil to you later, you can say _Tom Bombadil’s shit, I pretend he doesn’t exist,_ and they’ll agree with you.”

“Tom Bombadil _is_ shit. Even I know that.”

“Really?” said Sam.

Bucky laughed. “No. Keep reading.”

The hobbits went to a village named Bree, and Gandalf wasn’t there, but it was okay, he’d left them a note. Of course it had a poem in it.

“Of course it has a poem in it,” said Bucky. “This book has too much fucking poetry.”

“All that is gold does not glitter,” read Sam, ignoring him.

“It’s a _lot_ of poetry.”

“Shush. This part reminds me of you.”

Under the pretense of checking that Stark’s car was still close behind them, Bucky turned his face away so Sam wouldn’t be able to see if he blushed.

“All that is gold does not glitter,” Sam read,  
“Not all those who wander are lost.  
The old that is strong does not wither,  
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,  
A light from the shadows shall spring;  
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,  
The crownless again shall be king.

“And then,” Sam went on, “there’s a little mark that shows them it’s from Gandalf. See.”

From his periphery, Bucky could see Sam holding the book out to him, but he didn’t trust his face not to show—not to— He didn’t trust his face, his eyes. “I believe you,” he said.

_Deep roots are not reached by the frost._

His eyes were wet. When he could trust his voice, he said, “Okay, that one poem wasn’t too bad.”

“Wasn’t too bad, shit,” said Sam. He drew the vowel out long and sweet, and he was smiling.

Bucky hadn’t wanted anyone since he woke up. When he was able to pull memories out of his past, James Buchanan Barnes’s past, he distantly remembered that feeling of urgency. Pressing Steve up against the wall of their apartment, sliding a hand between his legs, Steve’s juttering breath against his collarbone. (That first Steve, the one he understood.) He thought of going on his knees for Sam. Sam’s fingers in his hair. The simplicity of it, the quiet.

He missed a little of the book, thinking about that. By the time he remembered to pay attention again, he discovered that Sam had stopped reading. How did he know to stop? Bucky didn’t think his face could have changed much—could it? They had beaten the asset’s tells out of it, but he was not the asset anymore, quite.

“Sorry,” he said. Rude not to listen.

“Lot of people have trouble focusing when they get back. It’s an adjustment, you don’t have to apologize.”

“I like the book.”

Sam laughed. “No shit you like it, Barnes, I told you it’s the greatest book ever written. Okay, left here, and we should see the chopper on the— Yeah, there we go.”

You couldn’t miss the chopper; it was red and gold. Stark piloted, which Bucky wasn’t thrilled about, but Sam said he was out of practice, and Stark said the last time Bucky’d flown a helicopter he almost ripped Steve’s body in half which would have been a crime against pectoral muscles so no way was he letting Bucky do it again. If Steve had been there, he’d have flicked his eyes to Bucky, checking for signs of danger, and Bucky would have resented it.

It wasn’t that Stark wasn’t scared of him. It was that Stark didn’t give a damn if Bucky, or the asset, killed him.

* * *

When the asset killed someone in their own home, most often to make the death look like a suicide, it left a particular feel to the house, something more complicated than simple emptiness. A once-important object deprived of its function, like the playing cards in the Smithsonian that had once belonged to the Howlies. Bucky could remember—he had written it down in his old notebook, and he wrote it down now in his new one, fished out of Sam’s bag, with a pen Stark threw backward at him—betting higher and higher on poker, and laughing helplessly. Behind glass, the cards were sad and raggedy, the worn edges pitiful because they were no longer loved.

(He’d tried to explain some of this to Steve, in Wakanda before he went down, and Steve had asked permission to hug him. He wasn’t sure why.)

Avengers Tower was like that, anyway. Not exactly empty, but empty of the purpose it was made for. Traces of smells gone faint with lack of use. Nothing but alcohol in the shared refrigerator, although Stark told them both to have Friday order anything they wanted, whatever that meant.

“You live here still?” Bucky asked, trailing a finger across the pristine stovetop.

“We all—” Stark swallowed, and stopped himself. “Yeah. I live here.”

“Are you talking to someone?” said Sam, gently, and it was stupid because Bucky never even liked that gentle professional voice Sam put on sometimes but still he didn’t like hearing Sam use it to Stark. Like Stark deserved it.

The asset didn’t deserve it either, the asset deserved, the asset—

One: Stark’s voice loud and jittery (“your fucking problem, Wilson”). Two: The smooth shininess of the stovetop, clean enough almost to see your reflection. Three: The persistent, low-level ache in his shoulder where his arm had been. Four: The smell of cleaning products. Five: The buzz of the refrigerator.

He pulled himself back. Here. Now. Sam had a piece of paper in his hands and was staring at it with an expression on his face that Bucky couldn’t understand.

He didn’t like hearing Sam use his gentle voice to Tony Stark. Slow and predatory, his eyes on Stark, he crossed to stand behind Sam and leaned over his shoulder to read what was on the paper, like it was his right to know. He was cheating a little, because he knew that even if it wasn’t okay, Sam wouldn’t swat him away in front of Stark. But Sam tilted his head a little to touch Bucky’s, and Stark made a face and looked away.

“This,” said Sam. “This is.”

The paper said _formal apology._ It said _presidential pardon._

“When did this,” Sam said. He was choking up, and Bucky wanted to take him away from Stark’s cold, assessing stare and make Sam pull himself together. The asset knew better than to break down in front of an enemy. Stupid that Sam didn’t know, too, when he had been in combat.

“This week,” Stark answered. “Should’ve been sooner, but I didn’t want to spin you up about coming home if I couldn’t back it up. I’m still working on the Raft, but—I didn’t know they had a black site prison to— Doesn’t matter. I should have known, now I do know, I’m working on it. I said all along the Accords shouldn’t apply to Clint or you or Rhodey since you aren’t enhanced.”

Sam flinched. “How, um. How is he.”

“Built him some new legs.”

“Good,” said Sam. “Good, I’m—that’s good to hear.”

“Keep—seeing him falling, though,” Stark said. “You were there, you remember. You wouldn’t back the fuck off, and Rhodey took a shot that was meant for you. Fell right out of the sky. Shwoomp.” He crashed his hand onto the counter. The sound of it made Sam’s shoulders jerk.

“Enough,” said Bucky.

He knew it was stupid to get in the middle of this. He knew that every time he spoke, he made things worse.

Stark said, “I’ll decide when it’s _enough,_ Helen of Fucking Troy. You don’t get to say what’s _enough_ when my best friend isn’t ever going to walk again. You were off in your fucking jet plane, you didn’t have to see him fall, you weren’t trying to get to him—”

_I couldn’t get to him._ Sam’s eyes were black as tar.

“Stark,” Bucky said.

“What?” said Stark. He was daring Bucky to say more, to fight him.

“Please stop. I’m—asking. Please will you—please, okay.”

Stark made a breathy, fake sort of laugh and grabbed an orange from a bowl of sad-looking fruit in the middle of the table. “Yeah, fine. Anyway. There you go, Wilson. Get-out-of-jail-free card, go nuts, turn in your fake passport, throw away the costumes. Olly olly in free. Care for an orange slice, Optimus Prime?”

Optimus Prime, evidently, meant Bucky. The orange looked gross. “Nah.”

Sam was giving him a funny look.

“What,” Bucky said.

“You—I never hear you say no to anything,” said Sam.

Panic slammed into him, a wall of it, a tsunami. It hit him so hard he knew Sam and Stark both noticed it, so hard that he drew in an audible, shuddering gasp. Danger, danger, danger. He managed, “It’s not no.”

Stark ate the proffered orange slice and watching Bucky like he was a zoo exhibit. This was freedom: Saying no to an orange slice, and having a fucking panic attack in the middle of Stark’s home. Some days he’d almost be willing to go back. The other way. No decisions.

He put out his hand.

“What?” Stark said.

“I want one.”

“No.” Stark gave him a shit-eating smile and put another orange slice in his mouth.

“I said I want one!”

“Tough shit. You passed.”

Now he’s upset again. Not shaking, but— “You said do I want an orange slice, now I want a fucking orange slice. Give me the fucking—”

“Hey,” said Sam. “You passed, now the offer’s off the table. Quit yelling, okay?”

_Why are you on his side,_ Bucky thought, even though of course, of fucking course Sam would be on Stark’s side, he’d known Stark for longer and fought by his side who the fuck knew how many times, and Stark got him permission to come back home, and Bucky was just some guy he’d been in a couple of cars and fights with.

Bucky said, “Ready to comply,” because it was the nastiest thing he could think of.

Sure enough, Sam’s lips parted, and his head went back a little, like the words were something physical. After a breath, he said, “That’s a real shitty thing to say, you know that?”

Yeah, Bucky knew.

“Well,” said Stark brightly. “This has been _lovely,_ but I’ve got an appointment with some geotracking down in the lab. Make yourselves at home, punch it out in the workout room or bang it out in one of your bedrooms—”

Bucky flushed.

“—Friday can light up paths wherever you want to go, and I’ll give you a call when we’ve got a location I feel good about investigating. Buckster, if you feel like getting a new arm, have Friday bring up the schematics, you can look over them and ping me if you want, it’ll just involve some excruciatingly painful nerve connections and minor brain surgery, which I’m happy to report I will not be conducting personally but which frankly I will enjoy overseeing because you’re let’s say ninth on my list of least favorite people.” He flashed a peace sign at both of them and whisked out of the room.

Fucking Tony Stark.

The kitchen was quiet, except for the whir of the refrigerator’s motor. Finally Bucky said, “Do you think the new arm’s okay to—” He waved his hand.

“Seriously?” said Sam. His voice was louder than Bucky expected. “You don’t have anything to say to me?”

“You can punish me if you want. They punished the asset when it spoke out of turn.”

Sam let out a harsh breath. It would be good if he yelled, Bucky thought, better still if he hit Bucky, although he knew Sam wouldn’t. At least then he wouldn’t have this tight, strumming feeling in his chest, this unattached dread.

“I’m,” said Sam. He’d steadied his voice, tried to. “I’m, I feel real fucking angry cause I think you know how bad I feel about all the shit Hydra did to you, and I think you’re using that on purpose right now to make me stop saying stuff you don’t like.”

Bucky crossed his hand over his chest, gripping at his shoulder hard enough to bruise the skin. “So?” he said.

“So I’m angry,” said Sam, tightly controlled. “And my feelings are hurt. I thought I meant more to you than—I thought you gave enough of a shit about me not to pretend you’re putting me in the same category as Nazis who tortured you. You can tell me to shut up, you can leave the room or ask me to leave the room, but don’t you try this kind of shitty manipulative guilt trip on me again, you hear me?”

“Or what?” said Bucky.

Sam huffed and crossed the room, sliding past Bucky to get into the hallway. “I’m not threatening you, Barnes. There’s no _or what._ Or you’ll be an _asshole._ ”

With Sam gone and Stark not chattering two hundred kilometers an hour, that feeling of wrong-unloved-empty that permeated the Tower anyway became more than Bucky could handle. He said “Where’s Steve’s room?” and a woman’s voice answered him from the walls, and he was tired and pissed off enough that he couldn’t even muster enough interest to care how Stark did that.

Maybe Steve’s room was worse than the emptiness, but Bucky deserved worse. Sam’s face, his face, his fucking face. _And my feelings are hurt._ Stop stop stop stop stop please stop, and Bucky imagined Sam curled up in his own bedroom, trying to sleep, teeth chattering from the cold, jolting hard awake and alone and alone and alone. _I’m not threatening you, Barnes._

No good being sorry. Sorry won’t seal up a gutshot.

He wanted to run. He wanted to hit something. Noisy, inside his head. “Hey, person?” he said. “Um. Miss. Miss?”

“Hello, Sergeant Barnes,” said the woman in the walls.

“Um. Can. Is, could you tell me if Sam, if Wilson—Falcon? Could you tell me if he’s sleeping or what.”

“You are not authorized to access that information,” she said.

Bucky said, “Oh.” Then: “Is that Stark’s rule?”

“Sam Wilson has requested that his floor be locked down to visitors for the next two hours.”

Okay. Better than if it was Stark’s rule, that’d be a creepy fucking rule, but Sam had been good to him, Sam had been inhumanly good to him, and Bucky ruined it, he was ice, he was winter, he destroyed everything good and warm, it was his fault Steve was gone and he’d drive Sam away too and it would be better, it would be better if—

He remembered that he’d wanted to tell Stark. Offer to do the trade. Himself for Steve. It was a good offer. As long as they didn’t know the words to subdue him, it was a good offer. He could pretend to be docile, wait for his moment. Not so much different, in the end, from sleeping in Wakanda, which was what was waiting for him at the end of all this, anyway. It wouldn’t be what Sam would want but it wasn’t any of Sam’s fucking business, was it? Make them pay for hurting Steve.

The woman in the walls showed him how to get down to Stark’s lab and buzzed him in. Whatever restrictions Sam had for his room, Stark hadn’t bothered with anything similar. He looked up when Bucky came in. “Looked at the arm?” he said.

“No,” said Bucky, “I—no. Why’d you design a new arm?”

“Made,” said Stark. “I designed and _made_ a new arm, and fuck if I know. It was something to do. You can look at it.” He pointed with his chin across the warehouse, and Bucky looked across and saw it, gleaming silver metal, and a star on the side that matched the one on Steve’s shield.

It felt like a trick. “Why?”

Stark wiped a trickle of sweat away from his temple. “Amends,” he said. “I guess.”

Amends. Bucky turned the word over in his mind, but he couldn’t make any sense of it. “I’m the one,” he said. (Who killed your parents.)

“Yeah. I don’t know. It felt like—” Stark’s voice had softened, and Bucky thought this must be what he was like with Steve. “I thought it would be what Steve wanted.”

“Sam said I shouldn’t’ve gone back into cryo,” Bucky offered. “He said it didn’t help Steve.”

“Was it supposed to?”

Bucky shrugged. He couldn’t remember, now. If it had been for Steve’s sake or his own, or somewhere in the middle. “Is the arm supposed to help him?”

“Sure,” said Stark, easily. “Get his best assassin boyfriend back up to snuff. He likes it when you hold him down, and that’s a two-handed job.”

It felt ugly to talk about Steve that way, like he was only his body, interchangeable between the two of them, but Bucky didn’t know how to put that into words Stark wouldn’t make fun of him for. “Not his boyfriend,” he said instead. “Sam said he was with you, before.”

“Yeah,” and oh, that cut-glass misery, he recognized it so well, “right up until he left me to—Barnes, let’s not rehash ancient history, hmm? Let’s just—you came down here to try on the arm, so let’s try on the arm.”

Sam hadn’t liked being sidelined. Bucky guessed that Stark didn’t, either, and they’d kept him out of the game for a week now, longer if you counted the days before Sam woke Bucky up. And Bucky owed him for the arm, and the intel. “Okay.”

The arm went on easy, fastened to the socket like it was Hydra tech to begin with. “S’good,” Bucky said, kindly.

(He owed someone kindness. He did not think of Sam’s voice drawn tight with anger, Sam alone in his room, Sam shivering as he slept, jolting awake alone, alone, alone.)

Stark smiled, kind of. “Course it’s good. It’s the best.”

Bucky tried giving Stark the peace sign with the new arm. Nothing happened. Trying not to be pissed off cause he’d hit his pissed off quota for the day and he still needed Stark to help him make the trade for Steve, he looked up.

“Surgery,” said Stark. “You need two kinds. I’m guessing Hydra put implants in your head to control the prosthesis, and those’ll have degraded over time is what it looks like. So I want to go in and take those out.”

Bucky’s breath hitched. He knew that it wouldn’t be everything, not a cure for the Hydra shit that still rattled around in his brain. Still. Implants in his head. Out. “I want Sam there,” he said. “To make sure nobody puts new shit in.”

“So ask Sam,” said Stark. “Okay, and the second one, your shoulder’s still got all the nerves you need to control an arm, but there’s no arm there, right?”

Bucky shrugged. At Hydra they hadn’t explained anything, they’d just done it.

“Okay, well, I am right, I’m always right. The surgery connects those nerves to a different muscle—in your chest probably, you’ll have some scarring—so you’ll be able to control the prosthesis with your brain, without any implants. Your brain’ll say _hey chest do a thing,_ and the muscle we connected to the nerves, it’ll generate a signal. You know what that means?”

“Yes,” said Bucky. He wasn’t stupid. Like radios, or trackers.

(Hydra had stopped implanting trackers in the asset. On long missions, it would get antsy and start digging for them. Once it did so much damage they had to abort the mission. It was punished for its disobedience, but that didn’t save the ruined mission. They made it keep one of the scars, as a reminder, but they didn’t implant any more trackers after that, so the scar was a reminder of the wrong thing. Bucky ran his thumb down it sometimes, all the way up his thigh, and remembered that once the asset had nearly been Bucky Barnes, and it had won a fight.)

“And the signal controls the prosthesis, and the hand does what you want it to do.” Stark clapped his hands together, _ta-da,_ and Bucky nodded to show he got it.

“Sounds better,” he said gruffly. “Better than the first one. Keeps everything up to me.”

Stark had been looking pleased with himself, but the expression faltered. He didn’t like the idea—nobody did—of Bucky belonging entirely to himself. Who knew what would happen, then.

(Bucky didn’t know, himself.)

“I won’t hurt you,” Bucky said. “I didn’t before. ’Less you try to come at Steve, like I said. You’re scared of the asset, but I don’t do that anymore.”

Stark puts his chin up, and yeah, Bucky can see, kind of, why Steve would like this guy. “I’m not scared of you, robot boy. You’ll recall I tore your arm off. Wouldn’t’ve lost against either of you bastards on your own. Two against one, it’s not a fair fight.”

Yes, it hadn’t been a fair fight. Steve couldn’t be fair where Bucky was concerned. Bucky thought possibly, now that he was meeting Stark for real, seeing who he was, the arrogance like armor, but he had made this arm for Bucky and he had gotten an amnesty for Sam and he acted like neither of those things mattered much—Bucky thought possibly Steve couldn’t be fair where Stark was concerned either. Too tangled up with him, Bucky thought.

“So,” said Bucky awkwardly. “Um. So. Thanks. For the arm. Thank you.”

Stark blinked. “Um. You’re—welcome? Christ, this is weird.”

Bucky barked a laugh. “It’s really weird. I’m—look, I’m done with it, for now, okay? I’m gonna, I need to, I’m done with it for now.”

“Fine by me,” said Stark. He undid the arm, and Bucky was startled, as Stark laid it carefully back on the table, at how crappy it felt to have it off. How off-balance and defenseless he was, without it.

“When?” he said, looking up.

“When what, the surgeries? This week, or whenever you want to do it. The brain surgery’s outpatient unless something goes wrong, and the arm, regular patients without a healing factor walk out the next day. If we find something on Steve, you’ll be ready to go just about any time.”

Not meeting Stark’s eyes, Bucky nodded. He didn’t want to say thanks again and he didn’t know what to say, so he looked away and offered a hand to shake.

Stark shook his hand.

He didn’t even say anything sarcastic about it.

Without Bucky even asking, the woman in the walls lit up a pathway back to his room. He tried to sleep a little. He wanted to tell Sam about his arm. He wanted to read more of their book together and press his nose into Sam’s spine.

Sam was mad at him, he’d hurt Sam’s feelings.

“Hey lady,” he said, from his bed.

“Yes, Sergeant Barnes.”

He wasn’t a sergeant anymore. “If Sam goes somewhere else can you wake me up and tell me? Uh. Just. If, I mean, if he’s somewhere I could talk to him, that, you know, if he wouldn’t mind. Like the kitchen or anyplace I could go.”

“Of course,” she said. There was a wry note in her voice, but that was pretend. She wasn’t real. A robot. She made Bucky very, very nervous, with her constant watching. Stark’s eyes, Stark’s tool. He had made another tool that had nearly killed all of them. He’d seen it on TV, though he couldn’t now remember if it had been Bucky Barnes watching, or the asset. A little of both, maybe.

He shut his eyes and tried to sleep.

* * *

The woman in the walls woke him to tell him that Sam was on the roof.

“No,” Bucky snarled. He was moving before he spoke, fast, fast, up and up and up and up, because he had seen Sam’s eyes, he had made them look that way, sad and tired. If Sam could just wait, if Bucky could just get to him first—

don’t jump don’t jump don’t jump don’t jump

The stairs were slow, but he took them as many at a time as he could. Without the arm he was off balance, he couldn’t jump the same way and get his balance back.

please

God please

If it was locked at the top he would have to break the door down, which he could do, but it was unlocked, fuck, thank God it was unlocked, and Sam was—

Sam was okay, of course. Of course he was. He scrambled to his feet when Bucky burst out onto the roof, yelling “What happened?” and Bucky was too weak with relief to answer him. Wobbly-kneed, he dropped to a crouch and hung his head down.

Of course Sam wouldn’t do anything stupid like that. Dumb fucking thing to think. Bucky’d spent too much time as the asset, with the asset’s fucked-up brain, with Hydra for whom everything was live or die, eat or be eaten. How stupid to think that in regular life, a person like Sam Wilson would leave his friends behind.

(How arrogant for Bucky to imagine that if Sam decided to go, Bucky would be enough to save him.)

“Did something happen,” Sam said, but his voice wasn’t urgent anymore. He knew nothing had. He could see how broken Bucky was. Come running up the stairs like the place was on fire, when Sam was just up here having a smoke.

“I,” Bucky said. “No. Nothing. No. I—I didn’t know you smoked.”

Sam, who was kind, accepted the change of topic. He sank back down to where he’d been sitting, his back up against the warm red brick of one of the chimneys, and Bucky followed, stood beside him, close enough to breathe in deep the taste of the smoke from Sam’s cigarette. Sam said, “Sometimes. Not to make a habit of it.”

Bucky reached down a hand for the cigarette. Sam gave it to him, and he took a long drag. It tasted fucking incredible.

“Bad day,” Sam explained, a little apologetic, as he accepted the cigarette back.

Oh right. Cigarettes were bad now. Steve had told him that.

“They let the asset have a cigarette sometimes.” Bucky said the words carefully, because they weren’t what he needed to say, they were only the prelude.

Sam breathed out smoke. He had a pretty mouth. “Real stand-up guys, those Nazis.”

It wasn’t supposed to be a jab, Bucky didn’t think. He sat down next to Sam, his human shoulder just barely touching Sam’s. “I’m sorry I,” he began, but he got stuck. What had Sam said? Shitty manipulative guilt trip. “I’m sorry I tried to make you shut up, like you said. I was, I was having bad thoughts, real bad thoughts and then, and so. I’m, I’m sorry. I know you’re not like them.”

“That’s okay.” Sam took another pull from the cigarette.

It wasn’t. He could hear in Sam’s voice that it wasn’t.

“I don’t need you,” Sam said slowly, “to protect me from Stark.”

Well, that was the last goddamn thing Bucky expected him to say next. “He was making you feel bad,” Bucky pointed out. “On purpose.”

“Yeah?” Sam drew up his knees, rested his elbows on them. He was wasting the cigarette, letting it burn. Bucky wanted to take it out of his hand. You couldn’t always get cigarettes when you wanted them. “Well, maybe it’s right I should feel bad.”

“His friend lived,” Bucky pointed out.

That was the wrong thing to say, that was so fucking wrong, because Sam laughed a laugh that was closer to a sob and he said, bitter, “He fell so far, and he lived.”

“You aren’t the one who knocked him out of the sky,” Bucky pointed out.

“No, I—” Sam’s voice cracked, and he dipped his head down between his drawn-up knees.

“It’s way less your fault,” Bucky argued, a little pissed off, “than all the shit you and Steve keep telling me isn’t mine.”

“Why the fuck,” Sam said unsteadily. “Why the _fuck_ does his get to live?”

Oh.

Bucky fell, and lived. If he could, he’d give that up, let Riley have it, Sam’s Riley. He wonders if that’s something Stark could arrange with his magical mystery machines. A machine that traveled them back through time and let them change things. Better for everyone, probably. Sam wouldn’t be crying, if Riley were alive and Bucky were dead.

When Bucky cried, not that he ever cried, he kept his hand up close to his face, wiping away tears and snot on his sleeve, trying to keep anyone from noticing. Sam cried like he was all alone. Tears went down his face, and he just let them fall.

Sam said, “I miss him. I, fuck, I _miss_ him.”

“Me too.” What fucking sense did that make? But it felt true, anyway. He could imagine Riley like he knew him, soldier boy, king of the sky, golden hair, dauntless.

Maybe it was just Steve he missed.

“Can I say something I know isn’t true?” Sam asked.

“Sure,” said Bucky. “I lie to you all the time.”

Sam put his head to one side, and his eyes caught Bucky’s, just for a second. He said, “You tell me the truth a lot too.” (Sam _fucking_ Wilson.) “So it’s—I’m always tryna get back in the game. Do what’s right. I got this damn degree, headed up this veterans’ group, cowboyed around with Steve like— I did all what I could think of to— And know what, I knew it didn’t matter. I played like it mattered I was there and I could make a difference, but I fuckin’ knew it didn’t. Doesn’t matter where I go, I’m always watching people fall.”

His voice broke on _fall,_ and Bucky could not bear it. “That’s not true.”

“I know,” said Sam, way too quietly.

“That’s _not_ true.”

“I know.”

“If you knew you wouldn’t say it,” said Bucky. His throat hurt. “You, you—that’s not true about you, you can’t say that, that’s—” (You’re the first thing, the only thing, that made me want to stay in this world.) “You lift people up, is what you do. Keep our heads above water. You didn’t put the water there, you can’t, you’re not, don’t _say_ that.”

Sam nodded, head down, defeated.

Bucky slid his hand down the length of Sam’s arm, took the cigarette out of his hand, and held it close to Sam’s mouth. He said, “Here.”

Eyes wet, Sam looked up at him. It was too intimate, what Bucky was trying to do, and he wanted to take his hand back except the cigarette was still in it and the cigarette wasn’t his to take. You couldn’t always get cigarettes when you wanted them. After a moment that lasted a hundred years, Sam closed his fingers around Bucky’s wrist, steadying his hand to take a drag from the cigarette. “Thanks,” he said, on the exhale. His lips were not the shape of the word, but the shape of blowing out smoke.

He didn’t let go of Bucky’s wrist. Like Bucky was a prop, his personal cigarette-holder. God.

Best not to think about it too much. Bucky did take his hand back now, so that Sam’s fingers slipped down his wrist and away. He inhaled from the cigarette that Sam’s mouth touched. He didn’t think about it.

Sam was looking at him.

Sam was looking at him.

Sam—

“Quit hogging it,” said Sam.

Bucky offered the cigarette back to him, and Sam took his wrist again, his thumb pressing into Bucky’s palm, his lips just barely touching Bucky’s fingers. He breathed in, then let go.

They shared the cigarette, passing it back and forth. When it was finished, Bucky stubbed it out on the pavement between them, and he reached up to brush a thumb over Sam’s cheekbone, and he kissed him.

Sam said “oh” into his mouth, and Bucky was ravenous for more. He tilted Sam’s head back to give himself more purchase, and licked into him. For a moment he wasn’t sure—but then Sam kissed back, one hand braced across the back of Bucky’s head. They tasted like copper and like the cigarette they had shared. Sam’s skin, under Bucky’s fingers, yes. His tongue in Bucky’s mouth, God, God, God.

_deep roots are not reached_

Bucky pushed a little, pressing Sam back against the brick chimney, his fingers playing across the skin of Sam’s neck, stroking at the hollow under his throat. Sam’s mouth, Sam’s hands. Kissing him, kissing him, and he could, oh God if Sam would let him, he could throw one leg over Sam’s hips, rock into him, get them hard, Sam’s dick Sam’s dick Sam’s dick Sam’s—

“No, wait,” said Sam, and Bucky picked up his head.

“What,” he said.

Sam’s breathing was unsteady. If they stopped kissing they would not start again; Sam would remember he didn’t want to touch him. Sam said, “I don’t think I.”

“Okay.” Bucky leaned backward, scooted away, putting space between them.

It didn’t matter. The asset could not have the thing that brought a surcease of pain. So what else was new.

“What do you mean, okay? You don’t know what I’m gonna say yet.”

“Yeah I do. You’re going to say we can’t do this. You’re going to say you don’t want me. It’s okay. I just, it was dumb, you were sad and I just, I’m sorry.”

Sam sighed. He was shaking, a little. His mouth was wet. “I’m—I want you, Bucky. I don’t think you can meaningfully consent.”

He had practiced saying this. Bucky could tell it from his voice, the measured way he said it, professional, careful. “Fuck you. I consent to things all the—hey, you know what, _fuck_ you, I’m not a fucking child, I’m—”

“Okay,” said Sam. “Okay. Let me—I’ll say it a different way. I think you can say yes. I think you can say Sam I want you to kiss me, and you’d mean it, and it counts. But I don’t think that you’d be able to say no to me—”

Not fair, not fair. Not fair. “I could too.”

“—and if there were things that weren’t—Buck, come on. You couldn’t even say no to a piece of orange.”

Yes I could. Yes, yes, yes. I could. Bucky’s eyes stung, and he tilted his head back.

Sam said, “Baby, don’t—” and _baby_ was too much, _baby_ and Sam’s eyes, soft and brown and his pupils dilated from kissing, from the closeness. Bucky was gone before Sam could say anything else.

Oh, God, it hurt. It did, it did, because he knew now, exactly exactly what he wanted and what he could not have. The sweetness of the word _baby_ in Sam Wilson’s mouth. His eyes, his mouth. His fucking hands.

_All that is gold does not glitter,_ Sam had read to him. _This reminds me of you._

Still: That night, late, Bucky made the woman in the walls light a path to Sam’s room. He went in, because the woman in the walls hadn’t said Sam said he couldn’t, and Sam was shivering under a fucking mountain of flannel and down. He woke a little bit when Bucky was climbing in next to him. 

“You don’t have to,” Sam whispered, bleary. “It’s okay if—”

“I like keeping you warm,” Bucky whispered back. “Shut up, go back to sleep, you’re keeping me awake.”

Things were permissible at night, sometimes, that you could not accept during the day. Sam made a tiny noise of contentment as he dragged Bucky’s human arm tighter around him, and they fell asleep together.

* * *

Villemaire and Anna were getting more and more lax about talking in front of Steve. He didn’t like thinking too much about what that might mean. Today’s test was a new one, or an old one—they kept talking about it like it was both, throwing around the words _proof of concept_ and then reminding each other of how well it had already worked.

“So do we try to bind him more, or—”

“He wasn’t bound more,” said Villemaire, and he laughed high and exultant. “This is so fucking crazy! I don’t know, look, we got him under control, right? Let’s just, fuck it, let’s give it a whirl, right? This should be the last thing before—”

“Before what?” said Anna sharply.

Before what, Steve thought.

Villemaire didn’t answer. Steve heard the syringe, and the punch of a button and—

* * *

He woke up.

The smell was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. In front of him, eyes cool and assessing, were a white woman and a black man in lab coats, and he had no idea who either of them were.

“Is the blood normal?” said the woman, and Steve knew her voice and it was Anna.

Run, thought Steve. He feinted left and ran right, but his body, his damned traitor body let him down: His foot caught around a piece of equipment, and he fell. When he tried to roll into the fall and come up swinging, he fumbled it. A bodyguard had his arms pinioned and a knee pressed into his back before he could recover.

(It had been like this when he was a kid, wanting things from his body that it could never, never do.)

“Buzz the boss,” said the other scientist, the one who never spoke, whose name Steve still didn’t know.

They had walkie-talkies.

God, he was so stupid.

He’d lived this before, from the other end.

He tried to remember what he had heard, the first time. Breaking glass, and a fight. He felt tired and dizzy and it was impossible and he had to, so he threw himself backward against the guard. The back of his head caught the guard on the nose, like he had hoped, and they both went staggering sideways, crashing into vials, shattering glass.

“Villemaire!” he yelled.

On the other end of the walkie-talkie, another Steve Rogers was listening. This was how he found out. This was how he would get free. He yelled it again, “Villemaire!” and he could hear Villemaire’s voice on the other end, _controlled fucking test,_ which meant that even though this was crazy, even for his standards this was crazy—

It smelled familiar here because he’d been here before. He was back in the basement where they’d imprisoned him the first time.

“I need a double dose!” Anna screamed.

There had never been a second prisoner.

“Villemaire Villemaire Villemaire!” he yelled, for good measure.

There had only ever been him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which time travel and memory are not hugely different

Someone yelled “RISE AND SHINE” and Sam came awake hard and fearful under Bucky’s arm, his chest heaving and his eyes wild. Bucky recognized Stark’s voice right away, but then, he’d already been awake. “It’s Stark,” he said to Sam, his hand gentle on Sam’s shoulder. “Just Stark being Stark.”

Sam fell backward onto the bed, rubbing his eyes.

“I have a lead!” Stark caroled.

“You scared the shit out of us,” said Bucky. He wasn’t actually angry—he was used to waking up to worse things than a rich genius who had made him a new arm and who wanted to find Steve and maybe could find Steve.

Sam visibly rallied. “What’s the lead?”

“I developed, excuse me, just very quickly, if I may ask a quick question, was that Bucky Barnes that I hear? Are you two _fucking?_ ” His voice sounded positively gleeful.

“How about some boundaries,” said Sam. “You let me and Bucky worry about our sleeping arrangements, how about, and tell us what we’re going to be doing today. You have a lead. Go ahead.”

(Bucky liked Sam. Oh he really, really liked him.)

“Someone’s getting pu-unched,” Stark said, singsong. “Whether it’s going to be you or Barnes, Wilson, we’ll find out when we get our boy back in the Tower. Shit, I’m going to buy popcorn. Clint is going to _love_ this. Okay, I had Friday run deeds for every place Barnes searched up in Budapest.”

“He wasn’t there,” Bucky reminded him. Sam took off his shirt, and Bucky lost the rest of what he had intended to say.

“Can you keep talking while I shower?” Sam asked. “Or are we in a bigger rush than that?”

He had a thin scar over his right shoulder blade, but Bucky didn’t look. He didn’t look, it wasn’t his place to look, Sam had said no and he wasn’t looking.

“That’s fine,” Stark said. “No sex while I’m narrating—or hell, we’re all in a fucking terrible place, have all the sex you want. Get off to my sexy, sexy voice explaining how I’ve utilized technology to save the day. Or, I mean—” For the first time that morning he sounded a little uncertain. “You know. Get us, situate us in a place where we can probably—”

“Save the day,” Sam called, from the bathroom.

Bucky fished around in Sam’s duffel bag for the deodorant and started getting dressed too. He’d had a shower the night before, and Stark had had a lot of different smells of soap in the cabinet. He wondered if that was how Steve lived now, like someone rich, a place like this where everything smelled good and was quiet.

He wondered if it was what Sam was used to, too.

“Okay, I ran deeds on all the houses in Budapest and had Friday chase down the owners as far as I could, close relatives, corporate connections, and guess who’s got a markedly medium-paying job in Villemaire’s R&D division and a dad with a hunting place ten miles from Budapest?”

“I didn’t go out that far,” Bucky said quietly. “Ten miles, I didn’t—”

Sam was in the bathroom and couldn’t hear him. They hadn’t discussed ten miles out. Nobody had said go out that far. If they’d had more time, if they’d been there for longer, it wasn’t that he wasn’t willing, it was just, it was only—

Stark was still talking. Bucky had missed the reveal.

“—since two. Fucking. Weeks ago. Which maybe is a huge coincidence—Wilson, are you still listening, or are you jerking off in there?”

“Fuck you,” said Sam amiably, wandering out of the bathroom in his boxers.

“You wish. Be ready, okay? Meet me on the roof in an hour and we’ll go. Best guess is they don’t have Steve there anymore—if they did in the first place—but maybe we can pick up some clues how they were keeping him and where they might’ve gone.”

* * *

On the way to Budapest, Bucky found that he desperately didn’t want to go back to Maine. He couldn’t have said why, except that going backward felt dangerous, and he was sure that Steve wasn’t there, anyway. There wouldn’t be clues. There wouldn’t be Steve. He didn’t like it.

“I don’t like it,” he said to Sam, in the helicopter.

He liked Sam because when he talked to Sam, he listened. “Okay,” said Sam. “You want to go back?”

“We’re not going back!” Stark called from the front.

Sam kept his eyes on Bucky’s. “We can jump,” he said. “If you need to. I have the wings.”

“We’re not jumping!”

“If you need to,” said Sam.

Bucky nodded. He didn’t like being trapped, but Sam hadn’t trapped him yet. What he felt wasn’t trust but more—cautious optimism. If anyone in the world would let him make his own decisions, it would be Sam. (Not Steve, Steve didn’t trust him, looked at him like a weapon, told him what was best for him.) “It’s okay,” he said. “We can go in. I don’t have the arm.”

“I’ll protect you,” Sam said, with a crooked smile.

Sam was only human. The laws weren’t fair, that had ever called him something else. Bucky had tasted Sam’s mouth, and he could imagine his corpse. How would he explain it to Steve? (How would he live with it, how could he ever.)

Stark dropped the chopper a mile out from the house, not because he cared about stealth, but because there wasn’t any place closer where they had enough space to land. He flew, and Sam flew, and Bucky ran. Occasionally he looked up, to check that he could still see Sam’s wings above him. Dark against the cold gray sky. Sam was an easy target up there. If someone was looking. Bucky knew what it looked like when he fell, one wing ripped away from his body. Better not to fly in the first place.

The house was all posts and beams, dark wood like all the others Bucky searched. Nobody was inside it, but there were bloodstains on the carpet. Hydra had always wanted Steve’s blood. Bucky remembered that. They wanted to make more like him, sent the asset out on missions to make it happen.

Sam’s fingers squeezed at Bucky’s elbow. “With me?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Bucky. He wasn’t sure. He knew that Sam and Stark had beaten him there, because the door had already been open when he arrived, but he couldn’t remember finding them inside, saying hello. His mind fractured dangerously when he most needed it to hold together.

There was a basement. Stone floors, discarded syringes, and not much else. The syringes made Stark’s face turn ugly with rage, and Bucky flinched backward from him without thinking about it. They were allies. Stark had made him the arm.

“I’ll scan for organic traces,” Stark said, unsteadily.

“Sounds good,” said Sam. “Buck and I’ll cover the rest of the rooms, see if there’s anything. Bucky?” and he stepped out of the room and Bucky was supposed to follow.

When Sam left the room was when it happened. Bucky knew it was stupid to think that that was why. But. In the middle of the room, Steve appeared, stumbling backwards, falling on his ass, screaming.

He was screaming. There was blood pouring down his arms, Jesus, it was so much fucking blood that Bucky must have been imagining it, and Steve had his head back screaming, a noise Bucky had never heard from him, a noise Steve wouldn’t ever give anyone the satisfaction of wringing out of him.

Stark was on the floor next to Steve before Bucky could formulate words or a response, grabbing his hands, pressing them to his mouth. “Hey, hey, no, sweetheart, baby, Steve, you’re okay, we’ve got you—”

The noise was unbearable, the pain and the blood and the fucking screaming. It was Stark’s name, suddenly, _Tony, Tony, Tony,_ that Steve was yelling; and then, as fast as that, he was gone. Tony shouted “Fuck!” at the top of his lungs.

Then Sam yelled, too. Sam yelled, upstairs, and someone fired a gun.

Of course they knew. Bucky realized it before he moved, and he moved immediately. He took the stairs three at a time, his hand reaching for his weapons. If he had had the other arm he would have been a force to reckon with, he thought. They wouldn’t have dared to touch Sam, if he had been whole.

Sam was in the living room, hunched behind a sofa that would not hold up to the hail of bullets the three men in black were aiming at him. Bucky snarled a greeting. They were expecting him to come to them, to fight (of course). But they miscalculated his speed—people always did—which meant that he caught one by the scruff of the neck and broke his skull against the iron stove before the other two had a chance to aim their guns.

“Stay on him!” shouted the one with better aim.

“Do you even have a gun!” Bucky yelled at Sam, furious and relieved in equal measure. He dodged a bullet—the guy who had shouted _stay on him_ could aim, but he telegraphed every movement, and it was real fucking easy—and threw a fire iron at the second guy, the one still aiming at Sam. It caught him across the back, dropped him.

Amateurs. He grabbed the guy who had shot at him by the throat and threw him.

Sam shouted, “Jesus, Buck, don’t—”

Too late. Blood spattered over the cast iron. Two dead. One for questioning. That was the arithmetic of traps, if you could stay alive after they’d been sprung.

Sam got between Bucky and the guy on the floor, the living one. “Stand down, soldier,” he said. He had never been afraid of Bucky. It was a precious thing, although currently annoying.

Bucky wiped blood (not his) off of his face. “We’re questioning him,” he said to Sam. “They had Steve here. They knew someone would come. This was a fucking trap.”

Sam’s face went bleak. “They have Steve?”

“Just for a second. I—wait, let me go get—wait, a sec.” Bucky bent down and extracted the gun—a Smith and Wesson .22 with the handguard removed—from the guy with good aim and handed it to Sam. “Keep the prisoner covered.”

Downstairs, Stark was throwing up in a corner. There was a fourth body, unconscious or dead, and Stark was wearing half a suit. One hand was ungauntleted, red with blood (Steve’s). He was using it to brace himself against the wall.

Bucky didn’t say anything, and waited.

Without turning around, Stark said, “You saw him, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Bleeding.”

“Yeah,” said Bucky. “Your guy dead?”

Stark shuddered.

“I killed two upstairs,” Bucky said. “I’ll wipe them down, leave them here. They can be that shit’s problem, in his employee’s house. We kept one alive, for questioning.”

“I think I’m going crazy,” Stark whispered. If Bucky hadn’t had enhanced hearing, he wouldn’t have heard it.

“Yeah?” he said.

“I swear to Christ I—I saw him like that, before. Bleeding like that, his arms. He wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t screaming. But it—I _know_ it didn’t happen. It must have been a dream, it must have been—I know it didn’t happen. It was, he was in Tanzania, we’d just talked. So he couldn’t have been in New York.”

Once Stark said it, Bucky could kind of imagine it too. Steve, half-naked, bleeding from the elbows, across the street in Brooklyn while Bucky messed around with some bottles. It couldn’t be a real memory because it was 1933 and Steve was there with him that day, anyway, the real Steve, skinny ribs, laughing so hard Bucky knew he would have to stop with the bottles in a minute and get Steve to calm down before his asthma kicked in.

Sam came rattling down the stairs. He didn’t have his gun, the gun Bucky gave him for safekeeping. “Hey,” he said. “You planning on asking this guy any questions, or what?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, showing all his teeth.

“I didn’t say torture. Hey, Tony, are you okay?”

Tony laughed weakly. “No. Steve was here. Did he tell you? Steve was.”

At that, Sam came all the way downstairs and positioned himself where Bucky had to meet his eyes. “Steve’s here?”

“He was,” said Bucky. His voice sounded strange, like it was happening from a distance, instead of coming out of his own throat. He did not like that distance. How could it be his own voice, so far away?

Tony was looking down at his bloody hand like it didn’t belong to him. Bucky could sympathize. “He saw it too,” Tony said. “It wasn’t just me.”

“Buck,” said Sam. “What happened?”

“Yeah.” Bucky tried to remember. Details were not as bad as the whole. “So we—right as soon as you went out, Steve was right there. In the middle of the room. He was yelling like—”

“I heard. Right before the guys busted in the door.”

Bucky was glad he doesn’t have to try to describe that part. “Wherever he is, they must be drawing blood. He had, there was a lot of his blood on the inside of his arms, starting at the elbow. Stark, is that right?”

“Fuck you,” Tony said unsteadily.

“Like he’d had a tube ripped out. He was here about ten seconds top to bottom. He was making the worst fucking noise, Sam.”

“They’re drugging him,” said Tony. He retracted the gauntlet on his left hand and started wiping both hands off on the wall, too hard, leaving streaks of tacky blood. “They’re fucking—”

“What else,” Sam said.

“What else do you—”

“Buck.”

Bucky nodded, to show that he had heard. What else. Remembering what else was how they would find Steve. He tilted his head back a little, thinking. He could remember better than this, he could see past the blood and Steve’s face, Steve’s face and his voice and—

“You’re a pair of cold fucking bastards,” said Stark.

Yes. That was true. Bucky was ice.

“Not helping.” Sam’s voice like a slap. He never sounded like that with Bucky.

“Marks on his wrists,” Bucky said. “From restraints. Ankles and neck too.”

“Good,” said Sam. “That’s good, Buck. Anything else?”

Bucky shut his eyes, to remember. “He fell. Backward. When he—he was off balance when he appeared. And he fell backward like he’d been—”

Sitting.

Like.

Like he’d been in a chair.

Without planning it, Bucky’s eyes met Tony’s. They both went very still. Tony said, “No.”

Bucky’s throat tightened.

“No, no, no. No. No. Fucking _no._ ”

Steve Goddamn Rogers.

Could they, anyway, poison his mind? Could they build an asset from the structure that had been Steve Rogers? Bucky thought not. The vessel would be incompatible. Steve would fight forever. He would never give in, never let his hands be used for—

He wouldn’t let—

He.

Steve.

Sam took Bucky’s wrist, lined up their fingers, and said, “One.”

Yes, one. He was the Winter Soldier, the only one that survived. They wouldn’t make another of him out of Steve Rogers. If they tried he will stop them. Tear the man upstairs apart.

“Hey.” Sam shook Bucky’s wrist.

One. Sam’s fingers, skin on skin. Two, the phantom ache of his arm, his shoulder, always. Three, the sound of Stark’s, Tony’s, breaths, each painful inhale. (He loved Steve too, and he was afraid.) Four, the tickle of his own hair against his cheek. Five.

He got stuck on five. He didn’t want Sam to let go of him, so he let go first.

There were three of them, and Bucky was stronger and Tony was smarter and Sam was better, better, better than any bastard who thought he could keep Steve Rogers in captivity, hurt him, bleed him, and not expect, not _know_ to expect that the sky will fall. Bucky would bring the sky down around all their ears to save Steve.

“He’d fight,” Bucky said—to himself, but Tony looked at him, bright eyes and parted lips. So Bucky kept talking. “He’d never stop fighting them. It took—for the asset, they couldn’t make it work like they wanted to. It kept turning back into me.”

“Is that supposed to be comforting?” Tony’s voice sounded almost normal again. Threaded with anger, but he always sounded that way, when he talked to Bucky. “Cause you’re pretty—”

“Hey,” said Sam.

Bucky wasn’t mad, because Stark was right. At the end of all this, he didn’t want to find out that Steve had turned into him. He said, “I took a while. Years, not weeks.”

“Our lead’s upstairs,” Sam said, carefully. “I tied him.”

Tony dragged his eyes up to look at Sam and Bucky. In Russia, he had looked that way. He had said, Don’t bullshit me, and torn Bucky’s arm from its socket.

“We won’t torture him,” said Bucky. He was saying it to assure himself, to remind himself that he was no longer the asset and had never really been. Here, he was Steve’s friend, and Sam Wilson’s, and they didn’t torture people for information.

The asset was good at torture, but you couldn’t make the intel any better. Hurt a man enough and he would tell you anything. That didn’t mean you could trust what he said.

Sam said, “That’s right.”

“I didn’t say torture him,” said Tony, without heat. “You all right, Wilson?”

Took you long enough to ask, thought Bucky.

“They weren’t surprised to see me,” said Sam. “When they came in, upstairs. This guy who’s got Steve, he must’ve known, some way, that I’d come after him.”

Tony’s mouth twisted into a vicious smile. “This one—” He nudged the unconscious guy with a metal-booted toe. “He wasn’t expecting me. Villemaire never thinks I’ll do anything to him. Thinks he’s so fucking untouchable.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” said Bucky, like they didn’t all realize it. “How could they know Sam’d be here, when and where, ’less they tracked us through Stark? You use your credit card, Wilson?”

Sam shook his head and looked away, a little furtive. If Tony hadn’t been there, Bucky would have asked what was wrong, but he didn’t want to get in an argument with Sam in front of a hostile. Not a hostile. In front of a, whatever Tony was, an uneasy ally. In front of someone who would not assume that Sam had done what was right, what was best.

“You check him for wires?” Bucky asked Sam. “The guy?”

“What am I, an asshole? Yeah, I checked him. He had a comm. Gotta assume they know you’re with me now, Bucky.”

Tony swore.

“I’m sorry,” said Bucky, to Sam.

“Did they hear you say my name?” Tony was intent on Sam, like he couldn’t trust Bucky to be a reliable witness. “I zapped my guy before he could—so this one didn’t tell. You say my name, upstairs, do they know I’m with you too?”

Bucky couldn’t remember.

“I don’t think so, but I couldn’t swear to it,” said Sam.

“You can pilot a chopper?” Tony was still only talking to Sam. Fuck you, thought Bucky. Fuck all of you bastards.

“Been a while, but yeah.”

“It’s like riding a bike, you’ll be fine. Land on the Terminator here if you have to bail out, he’s a soft cushy landing if Steve’s anything to go by. I need to go be visible somewhere else, right the fuck now. Get what you can out of ’em—” (Oh, so the guy Tony’d hit wasn’t dead.) “—and get back to the Tower when you have something. I’ll be there.” The suit attached itself to Tony, piece by piece, as he slid past Bucky and Sam and up the stairs. Bucky made himself stay still, not flinch as the suit went by him. They were allies. They were allies. They were allies.

The room was very empty, without Stark. He occupied a great deal of space.

“I saw him,” Bucky said.

“We’ll find him,” said Sam, like he was trying to convince both of them.

“I just. I need a second.”

This was true, in its essentials. He was doing the thing Sam didn’t like, using Sam’s feelings to get him to do what Bucky wanted. But captives were Sam and Tony and Bucky’s problem, while bodies were Villemaire’s.

(If this was Hydra, if that’s who Villemaire was working with, if that’s what they were doing to Steve, the guy upstairs would already be dead. Cold comfort, but comfort nonetheless.)

Sam nodded and went upstairs, and Bucky quietly killed the guy Tony had knocked unconscious. He went upstairs for some towels and wiped the room down every place he or Tony had touched. Of course Sam hadn’t touched anything down there, not even a banister. He was smart, Sam Wilson, smarter than Tony gave him credit for.

(He had to ask Sam about the credit card thing.)

He wished Tony hadn’t said that about going crazy, remembering Steve like that before. This fake memory, this thing that had never happened, acted exactly the way his real memories did, came at him out of nowhere and wouldn’t leave him alone. Out on the pier, like they did when they could slip away from chores (Bucky was a bad influence, Mrs. Rogers didn’t mind), and across the way he’d seen Steve. Steve with the serum, bleeding, bleeding. He clapped his hands, slippery with blood. Bucky—the old one, the good one, James Buchanan Barnes—shifted his body so his Steve wouldn’t see, and want to help.

That had never happened. His mind did this to him, sometimes. Made things up.

He went upstairs. Sam had the guy tied to the same oven that had splattered the brains of his buddies. Maybe Bucky should feel guilty about that, but he felt only justified: This man belonged to the people who had made Steve scream that way. Unearthly, the sound of it.

If Steve was dead—

Sam put a hand on Bucky’s arm.

He had to ask about the credit card thing.

“Why’d you make that face,” said Bucky. “About the credit card.”

“Oh, just—” Sam shrugged one shoulder. His fingers still rested lightly on Bucky’s elbow. If Bucky moved he would stop touching him. “I maxed it out. The flights. I’m—you know. I’ve been on a leave of absence from work while this—it’s okay. I can get back to work, now. So it’s fine.”

Not fine. Not fine for Sam to give up everything he had like this. He was stupid the same way Steve was stupid, sacrificing when he should be selfish.

“Do you need me to make him talk,” said Bucky. He was angry about the money, and the blood, and Tony Stark making him think he was going crazy. He wanted to hit someone. Kill someone. Who cared if it worked better or worse. How easy to relax into being the asset and let go of everything that burned him.

But Sam’s fingers, on his elbow.

“I told you what I know!” the guy screamed.

“It’s good intel,” said Sam. “We can leave him alone. You don’t need to kill him.”

How did Sam know? How did he always fucking know. “Murder suicide is clean. Tells an easy story. I know how to do the noose so the coroner can’t tell we were here.”

“Please,” the guy said. “Please, fuck, don’t kill me, I swear to God I’ll keep my mouth shut, I won’t say anything, I won’t fucking, I swear, I fucking swear.”

Bucky spared him a glance. He had scruffy red hair, messy under his helmet, and a dumb little mustache. “You know Steve Rogers?”

Sam tightened his grip on Bucky’s arm.

“Yes,” whispered the guy.

“You know what they were doing to him?”

The guy’s eyes, white with terror, went to Sam. “I—kind of. They didn’t let us in the room when they were—I don’t know what they’re keeping him for.”

“Bucky,” said Sam. His fingers were an anchor. Without them Bucky might fly away. Without them the asset—

(don’t)

“I’d like to talk about this with you somewhere else.” Sam’s voice was even. He was trying to manage Bucky, make him behave, like everyone, like everyone always had. “Would that be okay with you?”

Bucky shook off Sam’s hand. How dare Sam touch him, anyway when he had pulled away, rejected him, up on Stark’s roof. “I am not one of your veterans,” he said, low and deadly.

“This is my op,” said Sam, still so calm, like he didn’t know what could happen to him if Bucky slid just a little farther back into the recesses of his own mind, the filth and the fall. Brave and stupid, like Steve. “You gonna let it be my op, soldier? Cause I already told you we’re not going to kill him, and that’s my final word, hear me?”

Yes.

Steve bled and bled, and this fuck with his American-made rifle and his mustache—

With an effort that he thought might kill him, he took two steps back from this fuck who had watched Steve bleed and had done _nothing._ “I’ll find rope,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Sam.

You didn’t thank soldiers for their obedience. It was assumed. Sam was a shitty commander, Bucky thought, scouring the house for rope. Cabins in woods always had rope. He found it in the attic, finally, and came back downstairs with it. Sam and the guy with the mustache were talking quietly. The guy with the mustache was laughing.

Sam made him laugh. Sam—

Shitty commander wasn’t a designation that mattered. It was Sam’s op. Sam had woken him up for it. Bucky uncoiled the rope. “Get him up,” he said, ordered, though it was Sam’s op. Bucky was better, would have been better, at killing them. Leaving this mustached fuck dangling from a rafter, to be Villemaire’s problem.

They tied the guy up together, Bucky holding the gun and Sam doing the knots. It had to be that way. Bucky couldn’t tie him up with one arm, and the guy already knew Sam wouldn’t want to kill him, so Sam holding a gun on him wouldn’t be effective. Mercy closed off so many options.

* * *

They’d started asking Steve questions. Villemaire had. Steve ignored him. He was pretty sure, now, that they were planning on killing him once they’d finished up their experiments. Villemaire asked a lot about Bucky, which made Steve think they wanted to use the Winter Soldier to do it. Throw him a few years into the past, let Bucky kill him there. Maybe if you died in the past, you didn’t get snapped back to the present.

He was so tired that he thought, sometimes, it would be a relief. If the Avengers found his body, they would bury it decently. Someone would know he was gone.

If they’d found his body a couple years ago, he would remember it, wouldn’t he?

Time travel gave him a headache, and he missed Tony so much it tore at him, and he didn’t want to die.

That last part was a surprise, kind of. He wouldn’t say so to anyone, ever, but there were times— There were times. Where he thought it wouldn’t be so bad, if he lost a fight finally. He thought sometimes about the quiet of it. They all did, Steve suspected (well, not Thor maybe), some of them more than others, though he felt it like a fist clenched around his heart when he looked at Tony.

If he had to die, didn’t want it to happen like this. With these people around him, their cold hands and the squish and flick of chemicals in their syringes. And he didn’t want—he thought he would do just about anything to prevent it—he didn’t want Bucky to be the one to kill him.

As far as he could tell, Anna and the other scientist—he doubted that Villemaire had much to do with the discovery and mechanics of the time travel—didn’t have it down to an art. The time travel. They always seemed slightly surprised when he came back, which made him think there wasn’t a predictable time window for it, and no matter how many leading questions they asked him about Bucky’s life in Romania for the past year or two, he never ended up much of anywhere besides New York and, occasionally, D.C.

Take the boy out of Brooklyn, he thought, and smiled mirthlessly.

He saw Tony a lot, when they sent him back. However far back he went—unless they sent him too far, and then it was ice and ice and ice—he nearly always ended up where Tony was. A good Samaritan called an ambulance for him outside of a race track where a man with a whip was smashing Tony’s face into a racecar. He tried to get to him. He kept falling. _Sir, just hold still, sir, there’s an ambulance on the way, please—_

He lay on the roof of a building, not one he recognized or remembered, and watched the Iron Man suit fly. It was a warm summer night, and Tony went higher and higher, a few spots of moving light in the sky. When he gets back down, Steve thought dreamily, I’ll kiss him.

It was hard coming back.

They were angry every time he came back. Coming back was not what they intended for him.

Now that he knew it was time travel, he couldn’t believe it had taken him so long. Obvious when you thought about it. The ice. Watching Bucky and his younger self at the pier. The hostility in Tony’s eyes right before he’d hit him, in the Tower.

“Priming him isn’t working!” Anna told Villemaire once, when he came back from an art opening where Tony drank champagne and Steve hid in the coat room. (Champagne always made Tony sick. Why was he drinking it?)

Priming. Was that the point of talking to him about Bucky? Not to get information, but to send him to where Bucky was? He didn’t ask. Even if it was only for a few minutes at a time, even if he had to hide, seeing Tony for those few minutes felt like the only good thing that had happened to him in months.

Not fair: Good things had happened. He’d had moments of happiness, he’d laughed with Tony on the phone a few times, even if it was always short-lived. They always remembered, soon, that they were on opposite sides of a fight. Steve who would not give himself into government hands again. Tony who would never again fully trust his own belief in what was right and best to do.

“We’re so fucked up,” Tony had said, once, on the phone. (Steve was in Vienna. He liked Vienna.)

“You’re not fucked up,” said Steve, because he knew Tony loved it when he could get Steve to swear.

But there was no answering smile in Tony’s voice. “I am. I really fucking am.”

Steve missed him, and missing him was hard because he knew—

He hadn’t come to New York to visit Peggy’s grave, and his mother’s. Well, he had, but there hadn’t exactly been a time crunch on it, and he’d visited both graves, and left flowers, when he was in the country to take down what Tony had started calling “Villemaire’s potions classroom.” He’d come back because he’d thought, because he had been stupid enough to think, that Tony was thawing towards him, a little. They talked on the phone at least twice a week, and Tony had even called Steve, once.

“It’s not an emergency,” he’d said, as soon as Steve picked up.

People didn’t know this side of Tony. They didn’t expect to see it there and so they didn’t look for it, the way his mind caught at all the tiny details of the people he cared about, and filed them away for later. He never forgot to get vegetarian food for Bruce. He watched for the moment Nat started getting uncomfortable at public events, and found a way to get her home. He remembered that when he’d called Steve before, Steve had assumed the worst.

Things had seemed better between them, and Steve had been so goddamn stupid he’d thought that meant they could be friends again.

“I’ll be in New York next week,” he offered.

A long silence. Then, “Care to stop by and see an old friend?”

Steve wanted to cry, hearing the effortful insouciance in Tony’s voice. “I’d love that,” he said, as sincerely as he could.

Coming off the plane was sadder than he’d thought, nobody there to meet him. Not that he’d expected Tony to be there to meet him at the airport. How could he be? Steve hadn’t said when he’d be flying in, but still, somehow, he’d expected Tony to find out and to send someone. He tried to tell himself that it was better this way. Back in New York, taking the subway to Avengers Tower, like it was the old days, before Bucky and Zemo and T’Challa.

The Tower was coded to expect him, like Tony’d said. “Hi Jarvis,” he said as he came in.

“I’m Friday,” said the voice. A female voice. Oh, right. Jarvis was Vision now.

(Steve wasn’t sorry, he _wasn’t_ sorry, it had been Jim but it could have been Sam, and Sam was in this because of Steve so he wasn’t sorry because he wouldn’t do it differently another time.)

“Sorry about that,” said Steve. “Old habits. Can, um, is Tony here?”

Pause. “Mr. Stark is in his workshop.”

The first time Tony let Steve into his workshop, they’d just spent their first night together. Steve had put his head in Tony’s lap and fallen asleep like that. In the morning, Tony was gone, and Steve had found him in his workshop, deep into a redesign of Steve’s armor, his eyes bright with ideas.

Sometimes he woke up and remembered that he’d never be able to touch Tony again, and it knocked him sideways, left him reeling. Those few weeks when he could touch him, kiss him, call him sweetheart, baby, darling—that hadn’t been for keeps. It had been stupid to think otherwise.

(Which he had chosen, which Steve had chosen, and he told himself sternly, _Now you damn well live with it._ )

Friday let him into the workshop, and he leaned himself up against the wall inside the door and waited for Tony to notice. After five minutes, it became obvious Tony never would, so Steve said, “Hey.”

Tony jolted, hand to his heart like an actress in an old movie. (Steve never knew when he was putting on an act and when he was sincere. He didn’t think Tony always knew, either.) “Cap,” he said.

“Friday said I could come down.”

“Oh yeah. Yeah, I told her that was fine.” Tony came over to Steve, his head to one side in that considering way of his, and offered a hand to shake.

Steve wasn’t disappointed. He was _not._ “Good to see you,” he said, the smallest expression of what he was feeling, the only words he could put to the almost painful joy he felt at seeing Tony’s face again. It felt like it had been years, not months. Decades. “You—what are you working on?”

“Classified,” said Tony. He took his hand back from Steve and clenched it into a fist, and the holodeck screens or whatever that adorned his workshop like fairy lights in Times Square at Christmas vanished all at once.

“Fair enough.” Steve slung his backpack down. This wasn’t what he had expected. “Um. Are the others—”

“Nobody here but us chickens,” said Tony. He was still watching Steve warily, like he was waiting for a challenge.

When Steve traced the shell of Tony’s ear with his tongue, Tony whimpered. When he pressed him against a wall, Tony went pliant against him. Steve remembered every place they had touched, every noise, every word. Like a firework he remembered. “Good,” he said. “Good, I—I wanted to see you, just you. To see if we could—”

“Fuck?” Tony said brightly.

God. “Talk.”

“Natch,” Tony said. “Excuse my French.”

“You’re in a weird mood.” As soon as he said it, Steve wanted the words back. That was a thing he could have said before. Not now. He didn’t have permission, now.

“Haven’t been sleeping,” said Tony.

“Eating?”

Tony gave a half laugh. “Are you fucking kidding me with this?”

“I—no?”

“I’m eating fantastic,” Tony said. “Five course meals, every day.”

He wanted Steve to say _Really?_ so he could make a joke about how stupid Steve was. He liked making that kind of joke, when he was angry, when they were fighting. Steve said, “Really?”

Tony knew that Steve was humoring him. He made a face. They knew each other too well, by now. How to make each other laugh, how to jab at their most vulnerable places. It was what you always risked, letting people under your armor.

Cautious, Steve smiled at him. Tony didn’t smile back.

“You know what the kicker is.” Tony turned his back on Steve and went back to one of his benches, banging tools and pieces of metal around like it was his job and Steve was interfering. “The piece du resistance, you want to know?”

“Yeah,” said Steve, although he hadn’t known—until then—that there was a kicker at all.

“I’m scared of you.” He didn’t look up when he spoke, though his mouth was twisted into a semblance of a smile.

Steve felt it like a bullet to the gut. All impact, but you knew the pain was on its way, and you knew it would be bad. “Don’t say that.”

“All week, I couldn’t sleep. Kept having these, I don’t know, nightmares? Nonstop since you said you were coming. These dreams. All these fucking people chasing me. I’m trying to get away, and I’m never fast enough. They rip out the arc reactor, drown me, take my head off with a sword, whatever. They say you never die in your own dreams, turns out that’s a lie, of course it is.”

“Tony,” Steve whispered.

“I’m a genius. Certified. You know that? Yeah, still didn’t figure it out. I figure my mind’s a mess, right, anything can send me off the deep end.”

He shouldn’t have come. He’d wanted to see Tony so badly, he’d let himself forget everything else. All the reasons not to.

“Then you walk in and I see your face and I’m fucking scared of you.” Tony laughed again, still not meeting Steve’s eyes. “If I were in the suit right now Friday’d make me power down. The dreams are all you and it took me until now to figure it out.”

“What can I do?” Steve said. His voice sounded bad, but the words were right.

Tony didn’t answer. 

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I want you to—” Tony threw up his hands. Those expressive hands Steve loved. “I want you to have not tried to kill me.”

“I didn’t,” Steve said, ragged.

“Yeah,” said Tony.

At the time, it had seemed simple. Or not simple, but at least—inevitable. Bad people had made a puppet of Bucky Barnes, and Tony was going to kill Bucky for it, and the only choice Steve had was to save him. “I had to,” he said, miserably. “I didn’t know how else—”

Abruptly, Tony was done with vulnerability. It never lasted long, with him. He swung himself back from the table and smiled brightly at Steve. “Water under the bridge!” he said. “Proud tradition in my life, people I trusted leaving me for dead. At least you sent back a helicopter.”

“Leaving you for—” Steve swallowed around a lump in his throat. He hadn’t even thought of that, the arc reactor broken, and the waiting. It had never crossed his mind. That day, he’d not had enough space for it in his head. He’d only been able to think, _Get Bucky out alive._ Oh, God. “How long until T’Challa came back for you?”

Tony’s eyes caught on Steve’s.

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Hour,” Tony said quietly. “Hour and a half maybe.”

Steve said, “Fuck.” He’d never wanted to touch this badly. Hold Tony’s hands, at least. Except that would be worse. He might be making everything worse, just being here. He should leave, probably, only he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Tony.

“An apology wouldn’t be awful, Rogers. At this juncture.”

“I didn’t know,” Steve said, “what else to do. I still don’t know. Would anything else have stopped you?”

Tony’s eyes would burn him to the ground. The answer was no, but Tony wouldn’t say it.

“I’m sorry I left you alone.” That, at least, he could say with honesty. Give him the chance to do it over, and he would change it. He would give the plane to Bucky, and he would stay at Tony’s side. Hold his hand, if Tony would let him, and wait for help to come.

“Yeah?” said Tony.

Steve made to move closer to him, and Tony flinched back. For a second they stood frozen, and then Tony made a face that Steve couldn’t interpret, and said, “See.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve said. “I—that I made you think I’d—” He couldn’t say _kill you._ He couldn’t bear to imagine that that was what Tony had truly believed. “That I made you think you were in danger. From me. And I’m sorry I left you alone. I’ll never—”

“Oh don’t worry,” said Tony with a bright, false smile. “I won’t give you the chance.”

Now it was Steve’s turn to flinch. A muscle jerked in Tony’s jaw.

“I don’t know what to say,” said Steve. “I—haven’t changed my mind about the Accords, and I’m so—I can’t even, that I left you, and you thought I was going to h-hurt you. I’m so sorry. Whatever you want, I’ll, I can—”

“I want you to come home!” Tony shouted. His voice broke on _home,_ and he let out a disgusted sigh. “Fucking—your apology? That’s no good to me, Rogers. I need you here, doing the work with me, not—fucking violating international law in Tanzania or wherever the fuck—”

“I’ve been working with nonprofits,” Steve said quietly. “Not—there hasn’t been—I haven’t been doing any superhero stuff.”

“Yet,” said Tony. “You mean that you haven’t done any superhero stuff, yet. You mean nothing’s come up where you decided that Steve Rogers, champion of the whole fucking world, knows better than anyone else how to solve the problem, never mind sovereignty of nations, never mind—”

You’re one to talk, thought Steve, but he bit it back.

Very unfairly, Tony knew what he was going to say, without him having to say it, and he was mad anyway. “You think I don’t know what you’re thinking? He’s got no room to be self-righteous about arrogance, but Christ, Steve, at least I fucking _learned,_ at least I _know_ that there have to be checks on what we can do. You want to, what, just—if you don’t sign the Accords, you’re saying you don’t give a fuck what any governments say they want for their country. You’re saying you know better than them.”

“I am not,” said Steve. “I’m saying the UN’s a faulty—”

“Oh, please spare me. You don’t like the UN? Join the fucking club, Steve, nobody likes the UN, but it’s what we _have._ ”

“SHIELD was what we had too, and it turned out they were run by—”

“People died in Sokovia, and their government never signed up to—”

“You want me to hand myself over to the same people who stood there and watched at Srebrenica?” Steve said. His voice shook. “You think I’d ever let myself be someone’s tool like that again?”

“You want to _be_ the same people who blew up a building in Nigeria? Cause that’s what you’re saying you want! That’s what you’re fucking refusing to—” Tony checked himself. He sucked in a deep breath and spit it back out. “I—I don’t know why I had you come here.”

“You missed our spirited debates,” suggested Steve.

He thought Tony would kick him out, for saying that, making a joke, but Tony rested his elbows on his work table, hung his head down, and laughed.

Steve said cautiously, “We could try again, sometime?”

Tony looked at him, suspicious. Before Ultron, Steve could remember when Tony would look at him with surprised affection. It had slayed him, that look. As if Tony was the lucky one, of the two of them, as if it made any sense for someone like Tony Stark to want to be with someone like Steve. Now he just looked exhausted, worn out from the effort of being near him.

(It made more sense, though, didn’t it?)

“You don’t have to,” Steve said. “I mean—obviously, you, you don’t have to.”

Tony chewed on his bottom lip. “No, I. Another time. Yeah. I’ll try to be better. Less, uh, this.”

“I’ll wait until you ask,” said Steve. “So you’ll know there isn’t any pressure, or any rush. Whenever you—if you ever are ready to try again, I’ll still want to, okay? I promise that won’t change.”

Tony nodded.

“Okay.” Steve found that his hands were clenched into fists, and he let go of them. He hoped Tony hadn’t noticed him doing it. “Well. A bientôt, I guess. Thanks, um, for seeing me.”

“Well don’t leave pissed, huh?” said Tony. To Steve’s utter surprise, he came around his work table, crossed the room to Steve, and hugged him.

He smelled the same. Accelerant and chamomile. Home, home, home. Steve buried his face in the curve of Tony’s neck and inhaled, reminding himself not to hold him too tightly. Tony didn’t let go, or say anything. The muscles of his shoulders didn’t relax; he didn’t melt into Steve the way he once would have.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, Steve wished he’d said _I love you._ He’d even thought of it, as Tony let him go and they gave each other watery smiles. But he’d been too scared (of what?), and he’d backed away from it. 

_Give me another chance,_ he prayed. _I’ll do it right this time, I swear, I swear._

As if the world had ever worked that way.


	8. in which Bucky gets a new arm

Bucky couldn’t sleep. He kept thinking about a mouthguard. The way Steve’s neck would be forced back as they shoved it in. The snap motion of it. Steve’s blue eyes, bright with rebellion. Even though there were worse things—everything was worse—he couldn’t shake the image, and he couldn’t fall asleep.

(It couldn’t be Hydra. If it had been Hydra, they wouldn’t have been so shitty at their jobs, and the guy Bucky and Sam had captured would have eaten cyanide. He wouldn’t have come quietly. He wouldn’t have gone to the police force and turned himself in for housebreaking, and told the lies Bucky and Sam fed him.

“I’ll find you,” Bucky whispered, his face close. “If you cheat, if you tell another story, there’s nowhere you can run, Пряничек, that I won’t find you. I’m not merciful when my friends aren’t near.”)

Sam whispered, “You awake?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, hoarse.

Sam rolled over. In the dark, his face looked different. Bucky had not realized, exactly, how guarded Sam was, in the day. How little he showed of the truth of what he felt. “Don’t tell Stark,” Sam said, soft, “but I feel like shit.”

Bucky huffed a laugh and tucked his head down, not to meet Sam’s eyes. “Me too.”

“Can I,” Sam said.

(Yes.) “What?”

“Just.” Sam took Bucky’s hand from where it rested at the curve of his waist, and Bucky wriggled a little, angling his hips away, in case. “Just,” Sam said again, and he put Bucky’s hand on the place where his neck met his shoulder.

Unsure, Bucky stroked there, and Sam gave a whisper of a sigh. Bucky thought of kissing him, just at that spot, how his lips would ghost over Sam’s warm skin.

“Like that?” he said.

“Yeah,” muttered Sam, and he said, “Sorry.”

Bucky blew a thin stream of air against the place where his fingers were petting, and Sam shivered: his whole body shivered. Bucky had no fucking idea what they were doing.

“Harder?” said Sam, and Bucky pressed harder, and Sam—God, Sam moaned, and he said, “Sorry, sorry” again.

Bucky wanted to kiss him and he wanted to kiss him and if he kissed him Sam would pull away, so he rubbed his fingers hard into the tension at Sam’s shoulder, and he said, “Don’t be sorry, doll, we both need something today,” and Sam’s head came up and his eyes met Bucky’s, and fucking fucking _fuck,_ the way he looked at him.

( _Was_ it want? The way Sam looked at him. It had been a long time, and Bucky couldn’t tell.)

“You,” Sam said. “You are,” and did Bucky want to know, or did he not, what the end of that sentence was? He smiled a little at Sam in the dark.

Sam had posed him, moved his hand where he wanted it. So Bucky reached down for Sam’s hand, caught between them, and rested it on his head. Obediently, Sam scritched his fingers through Bucky’s hair, and Bucky tilted his head back like a cat for it. “Feels good when you do that,” he said.

“Yeah?” said Sam.

“Yeah,” said Bucky, and he went back to rubbing Sam’s neck. Something occurred to him, and he added, “I do like being touched sometimes. When it’s you.”

Sam whispered, “Oh man.”

Their faces were close, and it was so dark. Bucky said, “Hey, stop a minute.”

Sam stopped.

Bucky grinned at him. “See.”

“Smartass,” muttered Sam. “Okay, what if we. Come here a sec.”

At first the kiss was very light, Sam’s lips fitting against Bucky’s, tender and careful, then letting go. They shared the next breath and did it again, longer, lingering. Sam licked at Bucky’s upper lip, and Bucky wriggled closer, wanting all of it, anything Sam would give him. He remembered how Sam kissed like this, one hand lightly resting on Bucky’s head, his thumb stroking back and forth, idly, across his cheekbone. If he could have done it without taking his mouth away from Sam’s, he’d have pressed into that, asked for more of it, harder.

Imagine, don’t imagine, imagine sliding your leg between Sam’s, shoving your thigh against his dick, swallowing his whimper at the friction.

Bucky twisted his hips away.

Sam said, “What are you doing?”

“I,” said Bucky. “I’m,” and he kissed Sam open-mouthed and hungry, and that—yeah, that was better, that was everything, the warmth and the wet and the taste. Bucky dug his fingers into Sam’s shoulder.

“ _Fuck,_ ” Sam gasped, a small explosion of a word. “Fuck, wait, please, baby, _God._ ”

_Baby,_ and this was the closest Bucky had seen to Sam losing control of himself. Bucky had done that to him. Happiness swept over him, not containable in words or even coherent thought. He pressed himself close against Sam, nuzzled into the place at Sam’s shoulder where his fingers had been touching. He thought, _baby,_ and smiled.

Sam was trembling, again. When Bucky kissed him, he trembled.

“You okay?” said Bucky.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Sam said, and his voice, God, his _voice_ like this, the hitch in it, because of Bucky. “You feel so fucking good, Jesus.”

Bucky wasn’t sure it was okay to ask for sex, even to want it. The rules weren’t clear to him. If he said _I liked when you put my hand how you wanted it,_ would Sam think that desire belonged to the asset, some twisted-up leftover thing put inside his head by Sasha Pierce? Bucky didn’t want to risk it, not with Sam up against him like this. He said, “You touch me like—”

A pause, a breath. “Like what?”

Like old times. Like a distant memory he could barely access. Warm hands and want, and want, and want.

“I don’t know,” said Bucky. “It’s good, the way you touch me. People—I mean, mostly, nobody does.”

Sam reached up with the hand that wasn’t trapped between them, to rub his fingertips against Bucky’s scalp. “That’s what you like?”

God, it felt unbelievably dangerous to confess to agree that it was. If Sam knew, he would have it to hold over Bucky. He could tell someone else, and they could use it to make him submit. Instead of answering, Bucky cuddled closer and hummed a little buzz into Sam’s collarbone.

“Tickles,” said Sam.

“You, um.” Bucky bit his bottom lip. “Um. If. If you wanted, I mean—”

Sam didn’t pressure him to find the end of the sentence. Their bodies were warm where they touched each other, and Stark’s bed sheets smelled of citrus. Bucky thought about Stark offering him the slice of orange. He said, “Ask me for something.”

“Okay,” said Sam. “Um, let’s see. I’m a little cold still, and you kicked all the blankets off. You think you could pull them up?”

Bucky breathed out. One: The citrus smell of the sheets. Two: The slight discomfort of lying on the left side of his body, the metal socket pushing back into his skin. Three: Honking, from the street. New York was always New York. Four: His hair tangling up in his face, tickling him. Five (six, seven, eight, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, infinity): Sam’s pulse under his lips, Sam’s leg thrown over his thigh, Sam’s fingers in his hair, Sam’s chin tucked over his head.

“No,” he said, when he had counted enough sensory experiences that he could approximate calm. “I’m hot. I don’t want any extra blankets.”

Sam held him a little tighter. Oh, fuck, it felt good, to be held like this, to be cherished, to have Sam wrapped around him like he could protect him.

(Wrong, bad, stupid thought. It was his job to protect Sam, not the other way around, and anyway, protect him how? Sam’s body was human and vulnerable. One shot, one twist of a knife, and it would be finished. Bucky thought about it all the time. What Sam would look like dead.)

“That was real good,” said Sam. The warmth in his voice was too much. Bucky moved closer, as if he could get close enough to share whatever it was that made him so _good,_ so miraculously unbroken. “You—it’s, look man, don’t laugh at me, but you don’t know how good it is to hear you telling me something you want.”

Bucky arched his chin up, trying to see Sam’s face. Sam obligingly tilted back a little so Bucky could get a look at him. Satisfied, Bucky cuddled back into Sam’s chest. “That’s weird.”

“You’re weird,” said Sam, bickering just to bicker. He was starting to sound sleepy.

“I think I could sleep.”

“You never sleep.”

“Do so.”

“Do not.”

“Do so.”

He did. Not a lot. Sam wouldn’t have qualified it as sleep, two hours on and two hours off and an hour on and two hours off and then it was morning. But curled up in Sam’s embrace, it felt like everything.

* * *

In the morning, they did the surgery. They drew an X on his head (that was where to drill), and pumped him full of painkillers that Tony insisted would work on a supersoldier and had, in fact, worked on Steve. He felt floaty and pleasant.

“Is Sam here?” he kept asking, and then forgetting the answer.

After three go-rounds of this, they moved the bed so Sam could be in Bucky’s line of vision while they drilled. He promised that he wouldn’t let go of Bucky’s hand. “Unless you have a seizure, okay?” he said. “And then I might have to let go for a little bit to let the doctors take care of you.”

“I won’t,” Bucky promised. “No seizure.”

What he did not say was that this wasn’t his first time with brain surgery. Before, they hadn’t given him painkillers, because they wouldn’t work anyway. They’d tied him down so tight he couldn’t move. For weeks ahead of time, they strapped him down and did things to him, and if he tried to move, there was a punishment. This was easier, and Sam was there with him.

The painkillers fucked up his sense of time, which he didn’t like: The whole procedure seemed to take about thirty seconds, though Bucky knew rationally it had to be longer than that. He could see Sam watching carefully, his face serene. When Sam noticed Bucky’s eyes on him, he always looked away from the surgery and into Bucky’s face, and he smiled.

“Squelch squelch,” Bucky said at one point, loopy.

“I’m going to kiss him,” Sam said, over Bucky’s head. The squelching sound stopped, and Sam leaned in and kissed Bucky’s cheek. “You’re doing so well. You’re doing really good. Just a little bit longer, okay?”

After the surgery, the doctor asked him a lot of questions. She was pretty and brisk. Bucky had forgotten her name, which was a crappy way to treat someone who’d just taken out a piece of Hydra tech he’d never consented to. “I’m sorry I don’t know your name,” he said, and horrified himself by bursting into tears.

“Whoa,” said Sam’s voice.

“Something something something normal,” said the doctor, and Sam said “something long time comething something.” His hand was still in Bucky’s, and Bucky pulled it insistently closer, pressed it against his heart, and wept like his heart was breaking.

Time sped up again. When Bucky was able to catch up to what was happening, he discovered that they’d unbuckled him. He was tearfully grateful for it. He still had Sam’s hand in his, though he couldn’t see Sam anymore.

“Baby doll?” he whispered. “Sam?”

“I’ve got you,” said Sam’s voice. It was coming from the back of his neck, and Bucky realized foggily that Sam was curled up on the bed behind him.

“Can we read the story,” said Bucky.

Sam was smiling when he answered. Bucky didn’t have to see his face to know it. What a good smile Sam had, warm and gap-toothed, a good and forgiving smile. “Sure, we can read the story. I’d have to let go of you for a little bit, to go get the book, though. ’Sat okay?”

Bucky said, “No.” Mostly because he wanted to remind Sam that he could say no to things, but also mostly because he was warm and forgiven and his head was clean, and if Sam went away it would become hard to remember those things. Dimly, he knew that he would feel differently when the drugs wore off. It didn’t seem to matter right now. “Sufficient unto the day shall be the evil thereof,” he said.

Sam laughed into the space between his shoulder blades. “Sure, I guess.”

“S’what Mrs. Rogers used to say.” Bucky tucked his and Sam’s joined hands up under his chin. “She meant don’t worry about stuff until you have to.”

Sam was moving, shifting around, keeping his hand in Bucky’s but changing something else, outside of the line of Bucky’s vision. Bucky didn’t want anything to change. Sam said, “Hey, can you send a nurse in? I need something out of my bag, but my friend doesn’t want me to move. Is that okay?”

Bucky came close to crying again, hearing Sam say that. _My friend,_ and caring that Bucky didn’t want him to go. Caring enough to change what he did. Had anyone ever—

“These drugs are weird,” he said. He could hear his voice slurring.

“Yeah?” said Sam, gentle. “You need someone to do something about that, or are you good?”

“M’good.” To his surprise, it was the truth. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this good before. It was like he was living in someone else’s body, who could feel warmth and comfort, who could be held by someone like Sam. “Thanks for taking care of me.”

“Aw, hell, Barnes. You’re gonna make me soft, you keep that up.”

Keep what up? The nurse came in, and there were rustling noises and some quiet conversation that Bucky didn’t listen to because it was nicer to float, suspended and free, and wait to be alone with Sam again. He was lucky, he was so fucking lucky. When they got Steve back, Bucky would tell him, thank him for finding Sam, and it would be okay between them.

“Say me the poem again,” Bucky said, when the nurse was gone. The spine of the book was pressed uncomfortably into Bucky’s back, but it was good, the sensation of it, and Sam had never once let go of his hand.

“Oh, now you like the poetry? Seems like just yesterday somebody was saying there was too much poetry. Getting kind of obscene about it, as I recall.”

“All that is gold does not glitter,” prompted Bucky.

Sam got quiet. Then: “I like you a hell of a lot, you know that?”

It was all a little bit too much. Bucky could feel the instinct biting at him to say something shitty that would make Sam disappear. At least then he’d have been in control of it. But he still felt floaty and nice, and for the first fucking time, his head was free of what Hydra had put there.

(He wondered if the words would still work. If they had been cued to the same implant that controlled his arm. Someday they would try it. Not now. He didn’t want to know, yet.)

“All that is gold,” he said again, real slow like he was explaining it to a child. “Does. Not. Glitter.”

Sam chuckled. “Such a brat. Okay. All that is gold does not glitter. Not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither.”

The next part, Bucky remembered well enough to say it with him: “Deep roots are not reached by the frost.” Sam said the rest of the poem alone, and it make Bucky feel nice, like the words were echoing into his bones. He guessed that was the drugs. Sam read him another chapter after that. The hobbits were caught by the Black Riders, and Frodo put the ring back on his finger.

“What’s Elbereth?” Bucky asked sleepily.

“An elf maybe.”

“He shouldn’t’ve put the ring back on,” said Bucky.

“Probably not.” Sam put the book away and rubbed his nose against Bucky’s spine.

“Are you staying?”

“Yeah, I’m staying.”

“I said no to you going to get the book.”

“I noticed that.”

Bucky wished he could see Sam’s face, but he wasn’t supposed to roll over. There was a hole in his head on the side that was currently facing up. Don’t let him move, the doctor said to Sam (Bucky still didn’t know her name). In the morning, it should be healed, Tony said to Bucky. Good as new.

As he was falling asleep, he imagined if that could be true. If he could wake up one morning, and everything that Hydra had put in his head would be gone.

Good as new. Imagine that.

* * *

They did his arm next, two days after, and Bucky knew there was something Tony Stark wasn’t telling him. He could see it in his face as they wheeled Bucky into the operating room, strapped down again even though he hated it because he’d rather be strapped down than knocked out.

“It’s going to be a long one,” said Sam. “I’ll be with you the whole time, though.”

“Sam,” said Bucky urgently. “Does he know where. Does Tony know where?”

Sam’s eyes flicked sideways.

Yes. Yes. That meant yes. “He’s alive. Is he alive?”

“Yeah,” said Sam. “Yeah, baby, he’s—I mean, nothing’s for sure, but Tony thinks, he’s got a good guess that— We’ll talk about it after, okay? Tony’s got surveillance out there, to— And once he’s confirmed Steve’s there and alive and we’ve got a plan, we’ll go in.”

“I heal fast,” Bucky reminded him. “I’ll go too.”

“Of course. Yeah, of course.” Sam smiled at him, a wobbly smile. Oh, God, he was scared for Steve. Whatever they’d found, it had scared Sam enough to make his face look like that, shaky. Had he known about it already, the night of Bucky’s brain surgery? Or the night after that, when Bucky had wrapped himself around Sam and they’d both slept four hours straight in a row?

The morning after, Sam woke up gentle and easy, like Bucky’d never seen him do before. He rolled over and cuddled into Bucky’s chest. “You’re so warm,” he mumbled sleepily. “Baby, you’re spoiling me,” and the thrill of hearing Sam call him _baby_ didn’t pall with repetition. Bucky wondered if it would be the same, once they had Steve back. If Sam would still come to him for comfort, or if—

Fretting about it wouldn’t help, or change it. They had to find Steve, that was the main thing. If after that, things between them were different, Bucky could just—yeah, he could just handle it. Like he’d handled every other damn thing in his life before, right? When he and Steve had fallen apart, it had felt like dying, but he’d made it through that.

They were shifting things around. The doctor. Sam was still right where Bucky could see him.

“I’ll protect you,” he reminded Sam, muzzily, closing his eyes. He didn’t want to see the nice doctor poking around inside his shoulder and chest. Didn’t want to see the straps that were holding him down.

_wipe him and start over_

(don’t)

“Deep roots,” he said to Sam. “That could be true, huh.”

“Yeah.” Sam’s voice was unsteady, Bucky thought maybe. “Yeah, I think that’s true.”

Bucky never wrote a word in his notebook about Sam. He wrote down a lot of other things he remembered. The cinnamon smell of Sarah Rogers’s kitchen. The first time he could remember kissing Steve (Steve kissed him, Steve was the brave one), his shoulders pressed back against the doorjamb, a prickly Christmas wreath that Steve had made poking into his neck. Sasha Pierce’s fingers sliding possessively over his metal arm.

Nothing about Sam.

If he wrote it in code, maybe. If he wrote that he had his surgery, and there was a kind orderly, who stayed with him and made sure that nothing bad would happen to him. Maybe that could be okay, not a betrayal.

Time was speeding up again. After the first surgery, right after, Sam had asked Tony about the time thing, and Tony said it was the Versed, and Sam said why does he need Versed and Tony said to relax him and Sam said to relax him or to make him compliant and Tony said why does it have to be one or the other and they got in a little fight about it. Bucky didn’t get in the fight. He wanted the new arm. God, he would do anything, he thought nearly anything, to have a left arm again, to be able to fight.

“You do not have to do this,” Sam had said through gritted teeth.

Yes, he did. Of course he did.

“I know that,” he said, and he smiled easily at Sam, to show that he was okay.

“Shit,” Sam said, like he was impressed.

“What?”

“Nah, nothing. You got a pretty smile, Barnes.”

Bucky had ducked his head, trying not to grin more at that. Now, lying still, strapped in, with time leaping forward and then slowing to a crawl, he thought of Sam’s cheekbones and his eyes and his laugh and _you got a pretty smile, Barnes._

Somehow he didn’t notice when the surgery was over. He was watching Sam, and Sam was there to make sure they didn’t do anything bad. “You’re not even a medic,” he pointed out, trying to smooth the creases out of Sam’s forehead with his words (even if it was just for a second).

Sam smiled at him, a little bit. “Yeah, I am, jackass.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.” Bucky liked thinking about all the things he didn’t know about Sam. If Sam would stay near him long enough, he could learn all of them. Everything that Sam knew how to do. They could teach each other things. “I make good spaghetti.”

“Yeah?” said Sam.

“Mm-hm. I make good—hey. Hey. Where’d the doctor go? Pretty bad service.”

“Bucky, they finished with you. You’re all done.”

“All clean?” said Bucky. He couldn’t move yet, so they must not be completely finished.

Sam’s eyes went soft. “Yeah. All set for your fancy new arm. They’re gonna come back in an hour and check if it’s okay to unstrap you. For now, they want you to hold still a little bit longer.”

“I can hold still,” Bucky said. “I can, even if they didn’t strap me down, I can hold still a long time. I can be good, I can—I can be good like that.”

Sam’s fingers clenched, and Bucky remembered, to his slight surprise, that they had been holding hands. They still were. You didn’t hold hands with someone you were scared of. Sam had always been a miracle of unscaredness, and that was why Bucky wanted to keep him, God, would give up anything to keep him.

“You are good,” Sam said.

This time, Bucky didn’t cry, although he felt like it. Must be the drugs. The drugs, and how close Sam was, and those things were why—in spite of how much he fucking hated being tied down—he was able to shut his eyes, hold Sam’s hand in his, and fall asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which Bucky doesn’t get a new arm as much as he thought, and they set out to spring Steve

The drugs wore off by that afternoon, and Bucky was equal parts glad and sorry to see them go. It had been nice, in a way, that floaty, easy way they’d made him feel, and it was nice to have Sam so close and tender with him. Now that he was himself again, Sam had shifted back to normal, where he didn’t touch him without a specific reason, and that was fine, that’s what they’d always done, but still, the loss hurt a little.

On the other hand, the drugs made him stupid, vulnerable. Now he was sharp again. “Tell me about Steve,” he ordered Tony, at dinner. (It was takeout pizza. Damn good. He fucking loved pizza.)

“Yeah,” said Tony. “So, they’ve got him at some fuckin’ office park upstate. Not much else in the complex, but they’ve got significant security out there. They’re expecting Sam and maybe you. Not me. Not big guns.”

I am big guns, thought Bucky. He wasn’t, though, if he couldn’t kill anyone, and he’d promised Steve he wouldn’t kill people, and yeah, okay, he’d fallen off the wagon a few times, but still he meant to keep his word as much as he could.

“You been doing recon?”

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Tricky thing is that Steve’s in the country illegally, and they’re gonna be banking on that. If we give them a chance, they’ll call the feds and make it look like Steve was attacking them. They could kill him and call it self-defense.”

Bucky swallowed funny and coughed helplessly for a few minutes before he was able to speak again. “Attacking _them?_ You remember what he looked like, Stark? They’re fucking bleeding him.”

Sam winced.

“Or,” said Bucky, sorry to have made Sam unhappy. “I mean—you know. He’s, he looks pretty weak. Not, um, much of a threat. So, y’know, it wouldn’t hold water.”

“I think what Tony means,” said Sam, “is that we’ve got two objectives here, maybe. We have to get the bad guys and get Steve out completely quietly—”

“That’d be the first-best outcome, yes.”

Bucky’d never heard that before, “first-best outcome.” He liked it. “So what’s second best?”

Tony stretched his hands up over his head, looking innocent, and Sam scowled. Oh—this was an argument they’d had already, when Bucky wasn’t around. When he was prepping for surgery, maybe, or doing tests with the doctors to check his brain function? He wouldn’t have said Sam had been away from him long enough for a fight with Tony, but his sense of time was all fucked, so who knew?

“Second best,” said Tony, “is we call the cops when _we_ want them.”

“We don’t want them,” Sam said, through gritted teeth.

“Sam doesn’t want them,” said Tony. “But look, if we can’t get Steve out of there quietly, right? If Villemaire’s going to call the cops on him anyway. The next best thing we can do is call the cops and the press together, right?”

“S’a bad damn idea.” Sam grabbed the cup of marinara sauce off of Tony’s plate and stuck a crust in it with so much force it splattered up to his chin.

“Why?” said Bucky, to Tony.

“Because Steve looks half dead,” said Tony, baldly. “Because they’re going to catch that on camera and splash it all over the evening news. We saw him. He’s half his normal weight and bleeding like a stuck pig. He can’t string a sentence together. Someone did that to Captain America, and that means somebody did it to, you know—” He waved his pizza around illustratively. “The country.”

“Does that help us?” asked Bucky.

“He thinks the cops won’t take him in,” Sam said.

“They _won’t_ take him in. We’ll be there, sexy heroes that we are, barely keeping our emotions in check over what’s been done to our friend, holding him upright—”

“Ha,” said Bucky. Like Steve would let them hold him up, ’specially in front of a camera. If there was a stubborner bastard than Steve Rogers when he’d just taken a beating, Bucky didn’t want to meet them.

“His arm slung over my manly shoulders,” Tony said.

Sam made a noise of disgust. “I need a shower.”

After he’d gone, Bucky gave Tony a considering look. “You did that on purpose,” he said.

“Did what?”

“Made Sam mad so he’d leave.”

Tony blinked at him. “I—”

“By saying stupid shit like that. Manly shoulders. You wanna talk to me alone you can just ask. Sam’s not my—he isn’t in charge of me.” Bucky leaned over and swiped the crusts that were still sitting on Sam’s plate. It was a thrill of intimacy, eating the food Sam had left behind. Also: Why the fuck would you ever leave pizza uneaten?

“Well.” Tony picked up his own pizza, and Bucky could see that his hands were trembling. “Well, he’s not going to change my mind, and I’d rather not fight about it. I’m tired.”

A spasm of pity went through Bucky. He didn’t care for it. Before had been simpler, hating Stark for what he’d done to Steve. When they were on the run, Steve said a lot of things to Bucky about how fucking pissed he was at Stark, but whenever Bucky tried to agree with him (“yeah, what an asshole”), Steve backtracked as fast as he could.

“He’s such a good person, Buck, you don’t know him,” he would say.

Back then, Bucky was more fucked up than he currently was (he thought—it was hard to tell, sometimes), and he didn’t know how to handle the bait-and-switch. He got pissed at Steve about it, and since he couldn’t get pissed at Steve, who’d given up everything to help him, he’d be pissed at Stark instead.

Now this pity. Bucky thought he could use a break from being human.

“Can we try my arm on?” he said, figuring that would cheer them both up.

Tony looked at him like he had three heads. “Again?”

“...Yeah?”

Then there was a very long pause, in which Bucky should have realized what was happening, but he didn’t because he never fucking realized what was going to happen until he was already falling. Tony said, “Barnes, you—you know you can’t just pop the arm on and use it like—I mean, the surgery doesn’t magically—”

“What.” (Bucky already knew what. He knew as soon as Stark said his name.)

“I mean—you have to do rehab, or like, occupational therapy—like Rhodes does, that’s why I— The arm doesn’t just, you don’t just pop it on, and boom, magic.”

Why not. Why not why not, why fucking not. Tony was trying to make eye contact, all wide-eyed innocence, that lying fuck, that asshole. Bucky wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of meeting his eyes. “I want the old one back.”

“The old one needed the implant in your brain. We took out the implant. Remember?”

“I need to— I don’t have time to fuck around with rehab. I need to find Steve.”

“That,” said Tony, with a magician’s _voila_ wave, “is what you have me for. I’m the brains of this outfit, you settle down and get comfortable being the muscle. Ah, hell with it, I’m the muscle too, you’re mostly just a pretty face.”

Bucky tried to stare him down. Tony stared back. Finally, Bucky said, again, “I want my old arm back.”

“Broke it down for parts.”

Familiar rage washed over Bucky, and he closed his human hand into a fist. “It wasn’t yours.”

In his notebook, he had written, _HE CHOSE ME,_ all in capital letters, so he would never forget. When it came down to it, Steve chose Bucky over the whole world. Everyone he knew, everyone he cared about. He chose Bucky, and maybe it was because he wanted the old version and he thought someday Bucky would turn back into the man Steve had known in Brooklyn, but still. Fucking _still._

If Tony had told him to choose between the arm and Steve, he’d have chosen Steve. Of course he would, of fucking course.

He hadn’t known that was the choice.

Anger possessed him. It trembled through every inch of him. Ice in his veins.

“He’s going to die,” Bucky spat out, because it was say the thought that owned him or throw Tony Stark through a wall. “He’s going to die because you wanted to make me your science experiment.”

Tony’s cocky expression faltered. Just for a second, it looked like desolation. Bucky wanted to tell him not to fake it. Not to pretend now that he gave a damn about Steve. Except even that wasn’t true. Bucky knew what it felt like to watch Steve Rogers throw himself into unwinnable fights, and it felt like Tony Stark’s face.

It settled him slightly. “I shouldn’t’ve said that.”

“He’s not going to die,” said Tony, voice tight.

“He’s not.” Bucky had to believe that; they both had to.

“And if he was going to die, it wouldn’t be because you—God, he said you were arrogant.”

Did he? “I didn’t agree to this,” said Bucky instead. “You didn’t tell me you, you didn’t say the new one wouldn’t—”

“Okay, _I_ didn’t, because I am not a _doctor,_ but you’ll recall that the very expensive prosthetics specialists that I brought in for you, at great expense although no need to thank me, not that I ever thought you would, went through with you _at length_ the recovery procedure. Were you there for that?”

He hadn’t listened. He hadn’t been listening. Sam’s hand was in his hand and he didn’t listen to the doctors. What would he ever have said to them except yes? He had to have a working arm.

“I have to have it,” he said, desperately, as if pleading could change what he’d already agreed to. “I’m going to have to—I don’t have time to do all this therapy and shit, I need to be able to, when we find Steve I need to be able to be, to be, I have to be up to fighting, or else—”

This was the game, this was always the game. How stupidly naïve to think it would ever be different. If the world gave you something, it took something else away. No more chip in his head. Then no arm either.

When they gave the asset a new arm, it had to learn fast. He. Had to learn fast. The controls. How to hold on to something or let go. Mostly how to hold on. Mostly how to never let something slide out of its grip, not if it wanted to eat, not if it, not if he, feared punishment.

Sam wouldn’t do that. Even if Bucky asked, he wouldn’t.

“Would you spar with me? In the suit,” Bucky said.

“No.”

“To practice the arm.”

“No.”

“You could hurt me,” Bucky offered.

Tony’s eyes snapped up to his. “What the hell. No.”

“No, look.” Bucky leaned across the countertop, trying to make his voice sound nice, persuasive, the James Buchanan Barnes voice that came with a wink and made everyone smile back at him. “I can’t move it yet. You could—I gotta learn how to move it. Or I won’t be any good to you guys, when we find him. And I heal fast, it doesn’t matter if you break something or if I get a concussion or whatever, that’s all fine, it’s just a good motivator—”

“Jesus Christ,” Tony said under his breath.

“You hate me,” said Bucky, desperate. “You want to hurt me. Make me pay for killing your parents. I won’t tell Steve or Sam. It’s for, it’s, we’d be helping Steve, it’d be _for Steve,_ okay, for when we find him, and I wouldn’t tell.” The asset never told, the asset kept its mouth shut.

“This is the most fucked-up conversation I’ve ever participated in, and I am _famously_ fucked up.”

Bucky slammed his fist down on the table. It would have pissed Sam off, but Tony didn’t even jolt. He watched Bucky like he was a lab animal in a cage. That was how weak Bucky was now. Tony didn’t have a suit handy and he still wasn’t afraid. Used to be the Winter Soldier just by appearing could—

“Life hack?” said Tony, which made no sense to Bucky. “If you’re talking about doing something and you think you have to keep it a secret from Steve, odds are you’re in the wrong.”

“Like the Sokovia Accords?”

He was trying to make Tony hit him. If he did it once, he’d do it again, he’d see Bucky could recover from it. For a second, Tony’s eyes flashed, and then the fight went out of him. He looked tired and old.

Bucky didn’t like feeling sorry for Tony Stark. Who had taken his arm. Whose parents he had killed. Between the two of them, they had each done too much damage to the other for it ever to be simple. He said, abruptly, “You should give Sam money.”

Tony blinked at him. “If you want to talk reparations, Buckaroo, that’s going to be a longer—”

“He paid for your hotels and stuff. He paid for everything and he took a—” Bucky sifted through his memory for the phrase Sam had used. “Leave of absence. So he doesn’t have any money now. He spent it all looking for Steve. And I don’t have any money either, and you have a lot, so. You should give him some. He doesn’t have enough. And you should get in touch with your friend and offer to trade me.”

Sam would have taken a minute to follow what he was saying. Tony Stark was smarter than anyone Bucky’d ever met. “No.”

“It’s me they want,” said Bucky. “We don’t tell Sam. Just call.”

Tony exhaled slow and shaky. “Stop—asking me for things I can’t—Barnes, he’d kill me. He’d never fucking forgive me. You don’t even know if they wanted you.”

“I can’t _fight._ I can’t—they hacked your files, looking for me, and then ten fucking minutes later they, they kidnap Steve, and that’s supposed to be a big coincidence? Just call him and say you’re willing to deal. You want him dead? You want them to fucking kill him because we went in too hot, or because the building you found isn’t the right place?”

“Frankly,” said Tony, very sharp, and stopped. He wet his lips. “They can’t let him go, all right? It’s been weeks that they’ve had him. Villemaire’s got a publicly traded company, he can’t take the risk that _Captain America_ tells the world he was being tortured by an American businessman. We get him out on the first try, or we don’t get him at all. That’s—we have one shot, that’s all we have.”

It felt like something was pressing hard on Bucky’s windpipe. He tried to breathe in, and choked on it. While he coughed, Tony walked to the refrigerator and made it pour water into a glass. He handed the glass to Bucky.

“He doesn’t die like this,” Tony said. His voice was light.

This was the thing. Why Bucky hadn’t run yet. Tony Stark would die for Steve. It was written all over his face.

* * *

Grudgingly, Bucky had to admit the bad guys had chosen a good place to keep Steve, a good place to make a stand if they had to. The building had been a government office after some big hurricane Sam had told Bucky about but he was too busy to listen closely. “FEMA,” Sam kept saying. “FEMA, Sandy. It’s two words. You can’t remember two words?”

FEMA had set up in this shitty old office park (now mostly abandoned apart from a payday loans concern), and then when they’d gotten the influx of disaster recovery money, they’d hastily renovated and expanded, so the permits Stark pulled off the servers at the local City Hall didn’t match the actual layout of the building anymore. It was twisty halls and offices in unexpected places. Lots of opportunities for bottlenecks.

Tony was going in hot once they got a bead on Steve’s location in the building (or once Sam’s bird got made). Bucky would be coming behind him for clean-up, and Sam was in the air, watching the exits, to ensure that the bad guys didn’t get themselves out onto the highway and grab civilian hostages.

“Don’t you watch me,” Sam ordered. “Hear me? You keep your eyes on your own paper.”

“Yes.”

“Yes you heard me, or yes you won’t watch me?”

Bucky scowled.

He promised.

He promised.

But from where he crouched, waiting for the signal to go in, he could see Sam up in the air, swooping back and forth, and he looked majestic and he looked so, so breakable. One shot would be all it took, and he would fall.

These were bad thoughts. He’d promised Sam that he would set them aside for later, these bad thoughts of his, not refuse to entertain them but just set them aside for another time. At the Tower Tony had done a demo of the evasive action he’d installed on Sam’s wings, and it had been astonishing to look at. He’d let Bucky practice shooting at Sam’s little pet bird while Sam and the bird tried to dodge, and Bucky hadn’t landed a single shot.

So. It would be okay.

Sam sent the bird in at four AM, and Tony didn’t even gripe about having to be up that early. By now, Bucky’d figured out that when Tony griped about stuff, he was mostly just enjoying the sound of his own voice, not making real complaints. It worried him a little that Tony wasn’t even play-complaining about this. He wanted to ask Sam did that mean Tony didn’t think this was going to be okay, but he didn’t want to plant that idea in Sam’s head if that wasn’t what it meant.

(Being human was, as always, hard.)

“Okay,” Tony said, into comms. “I’ve got video. Falcon, you watching this?”

“Yep. You want to keep Bucky posted on what we’re looking at?”

“Absolutely I do,” said Tony, and Bucky almost smiled. “Okay, Buckaroo, we’ve got a lot of fucking clutter. Dust, file cabinets, papers everywhere. They’ve gotta have gas as part of the defense plan—lot of shit for us to bang into if we can’t see—so keep your goggles and the filter for your face on you when you follow me in.”

“Cameras?” Bucky asked.

“A bunch. Most corners. They may have a dedicated staff following every feed, but I doubt Villemaire’s investing in that. He’s not going to want smart guys for this, people who might think to blackmail him. Works in our favor.”

Sam said, “That mean they’re not gonna see Red Wing?”

“That’s the dream.”

They’d gone ten rounds over whether they wanted to take out the patrol first, or send in the bird to search for Steve first. Both carried a risk that Villemaire and his people would figure out they were under attack, and Bucky argued that it made good sense to knock out two combatants before they started anything else. Tony hadn’t been willing to budge on it.

“They notice two people missing, they’re going to move straight to hostage negotiation. That’s fucking messy, and I don’t like mess.”

Hah. Bucky’d been down to Tony’s lab. Tony Stark loved mess.

“He’s right,” Sam had said, unfolding and re-folding his arms. “Red Wing won’t look like anything unless they already know. Buys you and Tony some time to get in there and start fucking shit up. We take the two guards first, and they notice? We don’t have any way to know they’re on to us. We start with the bird, maybe we still get the patrols, maybe we find Steve before we walk in the doors at all, and for damn sure we know the second they make us.”

Plans never went according to plan.

Scratch that: Plans with a team never went according to plan. There was a reason the asset was famous for working on its own. Bucky couldn’t swear that the asset had ever made any decisions on its own, but enough operatives ended up dead at its hands without it hurting the missions that someone in high command must’ve put a note in his file: It works alone.

(Sam hated it when he called the asset _it._ He should remember to stop. The more Sam remembered how fucked up Bucky’s life has been, the less he wanted to kiss him.)

Stark said, “Fuck.”

“You have to keep it down,” Bucky said urgently, “whatever it is,” but he already wasn’t keeping it down: All three of them heard the sound of the repulsor blast.

“Fuck!” Stark said again. On the comms Bucky heard a man yelling _We’re under attack,_ and that was it, they were blown, they had to get to Steve right the fuck now or risk losing him.

“Stark, move in,” Sam commanded.

Another repulsor blast. Louder, this time. Bucky heard it through the comms and with his own ears, which wasn’t a good sign. Then Stark said, “Okay, going in. Exit one, like we discussed. Bucky, gas mask and goggles, right?”

Since he had a few minutes to play with—he was clean-up, not the strike force—Bucky gave up on stealth and threw himself out of his hiding place in one of the shrubberies, grabbing the second patrol guy by the throat before the man had a chance to scream. Sam was in the air, watching, so Bucky kneed the guy in the groin, hard enough to do permanent damage, ripped a comm out of his ear, and stole the gun from his holster.

Killing him would be tidy. “We came for my friend Steve,” Bucky said, taking the guy by the throat again, lifting him up.

(He liked this trick. It scared people. Didn’t work if they were tall, but this guy was more compact, lots of muscle. He hoped Sam was impressed, how he wasn’t killing the fucker.)

“Inside,” choked the guy. Paid muscle always gave up easy. “Don’t—fuck—never let me near—please—”

Bucky threw him, and advanced on him. This guy was no soldier. He scrabbled backward, looking around wildly for his weapon. Hadn’t even noticed Bucky take it from him. Probably’d pissed his pants too. “Cops’ll be here soon,” Bucky growled. “You better hope you’re gone by then.”

“Uh, back-up?” said Tony’s voice in his ear.

“Yeah, Buck, if you can—”

“We’re done here,” said Bucky, keeping his voice low and dark. The guy was whimpering, massaging his throat and gasping for breath. Bucky ran back toward the building, toward Steve.

Tony had been right: They’d gassed the place, probably as soon as Iron Man came in the front door. Fucking stupid—did they think Tony Stark didn’t have an air filter built into the suit? The fucking thing could go to space, even Bucky knew that. He snapped on his goggles and the wafer-thin gas mask that Tony had promised would work.

Nobody could die. That was the main rule. If there were bodies they’d have problems afterward. It pissed Bucky off because it meant that their jobs were way the fuck harder. “The asset never had that rule,” he’d spat at Sam, when they were doing the planning.

“Oh,” said Tony. “Hydra had no respect for human life? Wow, that’s brand fucking new intel, Barnes, thanks a ton for bringing that our way.”

Instead he had some twelve-packs of what Tony called “poison corn holders” and Bruce Banner (who was nervous around Bucky and came up to him to explain that he was nervous around him, who the fuck did that?) called “baby tranqs.” You could throw them like darts, if you had the throwing lines for it. Stab someone up close if not. Neck was best, Banner had said.

“Red Wing’s—” Sam’s voice faltered. “Okay, I—Red Wing found—I think we’re getting close. Tony, I’m sending coordinates. Blast through a wall if you have to.”

“Have to,” repeated Tony. “Such a wobbly concept, don’t you find? Barnes, are you behind me?”

“Affirmative,” said Bucky. It was inconvenient coming after Tony, who seemed to have knocked down every fucking piece of furniture on his way in while encountering only a few goons. Bucky occupied himself shooting out the cameras. Better than nothing.

“Christ,” Tony said into the comms.

“This doesn’t change anything,” said Sam, his voice harsh. “This doesn’t—”

Bucky caught up with Tony just then. It wasn’t on the way to Steve, he didn’t think, or if it was then they’d hidden the entrance pretty well. Looked like it had once been just a regular office, with a big desk and a bunch of shelves. But instead of cabinets up against the walls there were refrigerators, five of them, and Tony’d torn one of the doors off. There wasn’t any food, just bags and bags of blood. Dates scribbled on them in black marker.

Tony was very still.

“It’s probably not all his,” Sam said. “Guys, we need to keep moving.”

“He doesn’t care about the serum,” said Tony. His voice was small. “So why—”

“Stark,” Bucky said.

“Why would he bother—”

“Get moving!” Sam yelled. “I need eyes—fuck! Bucky—Red Wing’s coming to you, okay? I think we’ve got Steve, we’ve gotta be close, so just get back out in the hall, straight down for two yards, then left, and Red Wing’ll meet you. Stark, _get the fuck moving._ Someone called the cops. Repeat, there’s police officers incoming, I can hear the sirens.”

“If he doesn’t care about the serum, then why would,” Tony said, soft.

Bucky was already on his way out the door. There wasn’t enough time, he and Steve had to be gone if there were cops on the way, or they’d be arrested, Steve would be, and he wouldn’t be able to fight back, they’d been bleeding him—

There was so much blood.

Red Wing chirped at him, and Bucky thought of Sam, up in the air while the cops came. “Get out of sight, Wilson,” he ordered. “Don’t—”

“What did we say,” said Sam, but his voice was gentle. “Stick with what you’ve got. Stark, are you following him? You need to get moving. Report.”

Bucky quit listening to the comms and followed Red Wing back and back. If he hadn’t been paying close attention (for Stark, for Steve, to get back out), he’d have lost track of all the twists and turns. How did anyone work in buildings like this? They were going in circles, looping around, slipping past ancient conference rooms with televisions even Bucky could see were twenty years out of date, and everything was shrouded in gas and dust.

There wasn’t anyone—

“There’s nobody here,” Bucky said aloud.

“Keep following him!” Sam said. “We gotta—they’re coming in, Buck, they’re on their way in, the cops, okay? Stark, fucking intercept them, we need to buy Bucky some time, right?”

Red Wing made a noise, zzzt-zzzt-zzzt, and threw itself at an office door. The others had been open mostly, or they had pushbutton locks that gave as soon as you pushed a little bit. This door was steel, and reinforced on the inside. “I got the room,” Bucky said.

(Oh God what if Steve wasn’t—)

“—reports of gas, and since I was in the neighborhood—”

Bucky threw himself at the door. If he’d had the metal arm, if fucking Tony fucking Stark hadn’t torn off his arm and given him a useless replacement, this would have been easy, should have been easy. The asset could have done it. The asset would have Steve out by now. “I need more firepower,” he said quietly.

On the other end of the comms, he heard Stark say, “When I got in here, I found _all these armed men unconscious on the ground_ ” with heavy meaning in his voice.

“Yeah, that’s a good point, Buck, can you grab a weapon from one of Villemaire’s guys?” asked Sam.

There weren’t any. “There aren’t any.”

A short silence, and then Tony said, “….Shit.”

Sam said, “Oh.”

Bucky put his head back and screamed. Fuck this. _Fuck_ this. Fuck coming all this way for Villemaire to outsmart them, evacuate like the chickenshit asshole he was and leave the place rigged to blow, to take out Iron Man and Steve and Bucky and the cops. “Get them out,” he snarled, and ripped the comm out of his ear.

Steve. Steve. Steve Steve Stevie Steve.

If he’d had the arm, he could have used a file cabinet. If he’d had the arm he could be through by now, he could be through and out with Steve. He pummeled at the door with all of his strength, threw himself at it harder than Sam would have let him, if Sam had been there. If he’d just had the arm.

_If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride._ Steve’s ma used to say that, when they whined for treats, or said it wasn’t fair that other kids had stuff they didn’t. If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. Life wasn’t fair. Life wasn’t fucking fair, and Steve Rogers would always end up at the shit end of things because that was what happened to people who were good and who wanted the best and did the right thing.

Okay. Okay. Whining didn’t help. Throwing himself against the door wasn’t fast enough.

“Need a hand?” said Tony’s voice in his ear.

Bucky could have wept with relief. “Fuck yes,” he said. “Took you long enough to get here.”

“I was getting the cops out. Get behind me,” Tony ordered, and Bucky obeyed, sort of, crouched half behind the suit with his eyes shielded. It took three blasts from the suit to break through the door, and Bucky was in the room before Stark was.

They’d left Steve alone. They’d left him here to die. His head was back and his eyes were closed, and there were needles in both his arms, sensors attached to his chest and skull. They’d shaved his head. Tony retracted the gauntlets and mask and crossed the room in two steps, touching Steve’s face so fucking gently. “Baby,” he whispered. “Steve, sweetheart, open your eyes for me, okay?”

“I’ll get the central lines out,” said Bucky. That was something he could do, knew how to do. Most often the asset had made his kills violently, but sometimes people were already sick, already in the hospital. If the asset could sneak in without being detected, there were things it could do that nobody would ever catch. Air in IV lines. It was easy.

“I know that!” Tony snarled, in response to something Sam said over the comms. “Bucky, let’s go, we gotta move.”

“He’s gotta be breathing out when I—” Steve exhaled, as if he’d heard Bucky’s voice, and Bucky slid the CVC out, careful as he could. He shouldn’t be doing it like this, with Steve propped up in the chair, it wasn’t safe, it wasn’t fucking healthy, and Steve was already weak, but then, the bombs. He jerked Steve’s filthy sweatpants down and took out the catheter, faster than was safe, so much fucking slower than he wanted to.

“Okay, time’s up,” said Tony, and he pulled Steve’s pants back up and scooped him up in his arms, the suit helmet closing back over his face. “Barnes, there’s a place for you to put your feet, back of my knee, you can put your arm around my neck. I’m aiming you at the wall, so brace for it.”

Bucky obeyed. He had to reach up a little to get his arm around Stark’s neck, and he was nearly dislodged when Stark launched, but they had Steve, they _had Steve._ Stark aimed them at the window, not the wall. Thoughtful of him. It was reinforced glass and it hurt like fucking hell, but they made it through.

“Don’t let go!” Stark shouted unnecessarily, and he propelled them awkwardly forward, teetering weirdly from Bucky’s weight and Steve’s. It fucked with Bucky’s ability to see what else was happening, but he caught a glimpse of cops, and one of them was aiming a gun straight up into the air. A shot caught Bucky across the thigh. It didn’t hurt. That would come later, when he had time to process it.

“Dropping,” he yelled to Stark, and he let go.

For the second time since he’d been woken up, he depended on an arm he didn’t have to break his fall. This time, he was able to roll into it, catch most of the impact on his hip. He rolled himself standing and took stock, as fast as he could.

The cops: Huddled behind their cars, pointing guns in at Bucky and Tony and Steve.

Tony: Landed. He wasn’t carrying Steve anymore, but he wasn’t not carrying him either. Steve was wobbly on his feet, shaky in a way Bucky recognized, and his eyes kept opening halfway and then closing again.

Sam? Sam had landed, too. He’d switched parts of his armor off, made himself look less tough, more human. Bucky couldn’t find the cop who had been pointing his gun at the sky. Maybe he’d imagined it. Sam was shouting at Bucky, but Bucky’s ears were fucked up from something, and he couldn’t hear right. Only a dull buzz. “It’s okay!” he shouted back. “It’ll clear up in a minute!”

A bullet hit him. Shoulder, not a terrible place for it, but the impact spun him backward. Why weren’t his ears working? As he fell—if he’d had his arm he’d have kept himself upright, fucking Tony Stark—he caught the sight of flames and dark black smoke. Oh right, he thought. They’d been going to blow up the building and now they had blown it, that’s why they’d evacuated all their men, that’s why Tony and Steve and Bucky had to leave in such a hurry. Why his ears were ringing.

His thigh hurt where he’d been shot. Sam was going to be mad at him.

Did Tony bring the media? Hadn’t that been the plan?

A man in a gas mask aimed a rifle. Big one. Hard impact.

Sam wasn’t looking.

Sam wasn’t looking, and a man was aiming for him. His head, his unprotected head, everything that was inside it, his gap-toothed smile and his eyes that cried tears like it wasn’t anything and his voice gentle when he read to Bucky.

Time slowed to a crawl, and Bucky was impressed by the novelty of it. The asset’s mind had stopped doing this for it long ago. It had no room left for this brand of fear, so powerful it stopped the world from spinning.

He had not let himself imagine Sam’s death. Not the moment of it, the impact, Sam’s eyes wide and surprised.

And Sam was not looking at the gun. He must have heard Bucky screaming; he must have known why; but he turned his head to find Bucky, and his lips shaped the word, “Don’t—”

Don’t look, Bucky thought, he wants me not to look. Of course Sam would want to protect him. Sam who always protected him, who put his body between Bucky and the bright, sharp edges of the world.

There was very little ground between them, and Bucky was fast. First-best outcome was to dodge it for them both.

He did not quite get that one.

The man with the gun fell backward, and that was Stark. Stark was everywhere, Stark was shouting, his composure gone, lit up with fury. He would save Steve. (Where was Steve?)

Bucky was dizzy, and Sam’s hands were on him, all of Sam’s attention. “Baby,” Sam said, his voice cracked (why?), “baby, Bucky, stay with me, okay? Stay with me.”

“No.” Bucky looked for Sam’s eyes to see if Sam had understood the joke, saying no when it was most important that he say yes. Too cloudy. He tried to laugh, and it came out a cough. Wet, and sputter.

Sam was doing something, touching him, talking to him, too many things at once for Bucky to keep track of them all. His voice faded in and out. “—real good, baby, you stay still and let me—”

“Yes. Yes, yes,” Bucky said slurrily.

“—don’t leave me, don’t you fucking—”

Sam was crying, and Bucky tried to raise the robot arm to touch Sam’s face, and he couldn’t make it work, and he fell and fell and fell into darkness.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which many conversations are had in bed

Bucky woke up to Sam’s hand on his forehead. Smoothing his hair back. He tried to speak, but it got lost somewhere. He listened instead.

“—almost like it’s your job.” (Stark was there, but he sounded okay and that meant Steve was okay too.)

Sam laughed shakily. A good, good noise. “Goddamn tragic sight,” he said. “You and me and these two fuckin’ half-dead supersoldiers.”

“No,” said Bucky. He was surprised to hear his voice work.

Sam let out all his breath at once and slumped forward for a second. Before Bucky could worry, Sam sat back up and said, “You are just contrary as all hell when you’ve been shot.”

“No,” Bucky said again. “My hair.”

Sam took his hand away. After a second of staring at Bucky, he suddenly got it, the whole thing. “You piece of shit. Is that why you said no to me, you piece of _shit,_ when you were lying there bleeding out, are you fucking kidding me.” His laugh was wet and ragged, more tears than humor.

“S’consent.”

“Fuck, baby,” Sam said. He swiped a hand over his mouth, and the hand was shaking.

When they were alone, Bucky would curl himself around Sam, kiss the back of his neck, tangle their fingers together. Sam would not tremble, then. “Take care of you,” he said. He was a little hazy, still.

Stark laughed, gunfire of a laugh. “You think it’s something in the serum?” he said, to Sam, over Bucky’s head.

“M’gonna,” Bucky said (pass out), but he didn’t finish the sentence before he actually had.

* * *

Steve woke up.

He had been dreaming. He dreamed that he was floating on a sea of blood. Did people float in blood like they did in water? He wasn’t sure.

Tony would know. Tony—

* * *

When Bucky woke up again, everything was very quiet, and Sam was there. Bucky didn’t need to see him. He knew the feeling of Sam’s breath against his skin. “Hi, baby doll,” he mumbled. “Did Steve.”

Sam rubbed his nose against the knobs of Bucky’s spine. “He’s down the hall. He’s—okay. Mostly okay.”

“Can I roll over?” Bucky asked. He wanted to see Sam’s face. Touch his hands, see for himself that Sam was okay.

“Onto your back, if you want. Your shoulder’s—kind of fucked up, and you’ve got stitches and some, some broken ribs. Go slow, okay, I’ll—” Sam’s hands were on Bucky’s back, very gentle, between his shoulder blades and at the small of his back, supporting him as he rolled. It hurt, but Bucky was used to it.

_Don’t wipe me,_ he thought. He didn’t say it. Sam’s face would be terrible, if Bucky said that, if he knew how much Bucky was thinking it, how it consumed his mind. Sam was sitting beside his hospital bed, pulled up close next to him, the bed rail propped up against the opposite wall. He looked very tired.

“You have to sleep,” Bucky said. He wanted to reach across for Sam’s hand, but his arm hurt too much for that. He wanted to ask Sam to touch him more, maybe pet his hair or even just brush his knuckles along Bucky’s cheek, but it was greedy to ask, and scary to want.

“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “That’s right, I do. You better hurry up and get healing. I sleep for shit without you.” His eyes were brown and soft and fixed on Bucky’s face, like he knew exactly what he was giving away, telling Bucky that.

Bucky smiled at him. “Yeah, you do,” he said. “Fucking pitiful. What’s mostly okay mean?”

“Oh—” Sam sighed. “They’ve been, um, they were drugging him, like we thought, to keep him sick, but they were also—”

Bleeding him. Fucking leeches, fucking vampires. Bucky wanted to kill all of them, and he hadn’t killed _any_ of them. He’d barely gotten Steve out in time; wouldn’t have, if Stark hadn’t been there.

“Drawing blood,” said Sam, finally. “A lot of blood. They might’ve had a plan for it, we’re not sure. Doesn’t look like they were doing anything with it, the—it’s dated. So. Maybe they were gonna sell it on the black market, or— Anyway. So when we got him back here, his body started overcompensating. That fucking serum. Making too much blood. It took the doctors a while to figure it out, but they’ve got him on blood thinners now. Should be okay, he should be able to adapt back.”

Bucky nodded.

They sat in silence a little while. Sam had shut his eyes and was resting his forehead on his knuckles, his arms propped up on Bucky’s bed.

_Don’t wipe me._

“Why did they want me,” he asked. When Sam picked his head up, Bucky looked away.

“They didn’t,” said Sam.

Liar.

“Buck. They didn’t. They wanted a supersoldier. One of the guys—one of the scientists—man, you should have seen Tony’s face. They made a time travel machine. This Wakandan scientist and some lady who used to work at Caltech.”

Bucky didn’t know what Caltech was. “They were testing it on Steve.”

“Yeah. They had some bad results in animal testing, and the government pulled funding. Villemaire found them and—didn’t have so many scruples about risk. They wanted to test it on a supersoldier first, tweak it a little, and then go to human testing.”

“They wanted me.”

Sam sighed and rubbed his nose with the side of one thumb. “They wanted whichever of you they could get easy. The Wakandan guy knew where you were, and they tried to—gain access.” He said the words like he was quoting someone he wanted to hit very hard. “When that didn’t work, they aimed at Steve instead. That’s it, okay?”

Okay. They wanted him, not Steve. Very, very, very clear. “They hacked Tony’s files.”

“They—Jesus, how much stubborn did they put in that serum? Yeah, they hacked Tony’s files, tried to. They were—it wasn’t cause they were using Steve to get to you. That wasn’t why.”

Bucky swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I _don’t,_ ” Sam said, his voice a little raised.

God, please don’t wipe me. Please. Bucky was shivering.

Sam sighed, again. “They wanted to get you—you in the past—to kill Steve. To get rid of the evidence. When he was alive, he kept coming back to our time. If he was dead, then—then he wouldn’t. So. They were trying to figure out where the Winter Soldier was at different times, to—”

Bucky wanted to be sick, but his ribs hurt and he didn’t want to move. He could imagine how it would have happened. It had nearly happened above the Potomac. Steve’s face bruised and battered. “How do you know?”

“They said.”

“They’re _liars,_ Sam, Jesus Christ, you can’t fucking—who did the fucking interrogation, who did—”

Sam said, “Please, please stop. I can’t—please stop.”

Surprised, Bucky turned his head, to see Sam better. His chest was rising and falling faster, and his head was bent low, his hands clenched tight in the thin hospital sheets. Sam was angry, Sam would wipe him. Start over. Clean slate. He held rabbit-still, waiting.

He held rabbit-still and he thought of Sam’s voice, warm as sunshine, saying _Old reactions, junk reflexes._ Sam wouldn’t wipe him. Sam didn’t hit him.

Hoarse, Sam said, “I thought you were gonna die.”

Oh.

_Oh._

“Nah,” said Bucky, trying for his best approximation of the James Buchanan Barnes smile. Sam wasn’t looking. “Hey Sam?”

“Yeah, buddy.”

“When I got shot. Did I make you think about—think bad thoughts?”

“You didn’t make me anything,” said Sam, like it was automatic. His eyes were fixed on something that was not Bucky. He was hurting, he was hurting and it was Bucky’s fault.

“I want,” said Bucky.

Sam looked up, finally. Looked at him. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want to be able to hold you,” Bucky said. His throat ached. “I made you sad and I can’t make it better and I can’t even—”

“That’s. That’s okay.”

No, it wasn’t. No it wasn’t. “No it isn’t,” said Bucky, because Sam liked it, at least, when he said no. Sam liked it when he said no, and said what he wanted, and told the truth. “I’m sorry I scared you, I didn’t know how else—there wasn’t enough time. I didn’t want you to get shot.”

Sam nodded, and kept nodding. He didn’t say anything. Bucky’s shoulder hurt, but he reached up, anyway, for Sam’s hand, tangling their fingers together. With a harsh noise, Sam dropped his head into the bend of Bucky’s elbow, careful not to put weight against the IV. His breathing was rough and uneven; the sound of it hurt.

Bucky squeezed Sam’s hand tight. He couldn’t really move, but he curved his body as much as he could without hurting too bad. “You feel that?” he asked. “Sam, you feel me holding your hand?”

“Yeah,” said Sam, muffled.

“You’re here with me. You’re here, we’re both safe, Steve’s safe and we’re okay. You did so good, baby doll, we both did everything just right, that’s how come we all made it out. Successful mission, right?”

Slowly, Sam’s head came up. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks wet. “We may need to redefine mission parameters,” he said. His voice caught a little on the words, but he got them out.

Bucky couldn’t put a name to the feeling that swelled in his chest. It was unfamiliar, warm. It made him bring Sam’s hand to his lips and kiss his knuckles, just quickly. “Okay, you got a deal. Nobody gets shot next time.”

“Definitely nobody gets gutshot at close range trying to protect somebody whose armor’s got evasive action built in,” said Sam, with the ghost of a smile.

Pride. That was what he felt. He was _proud_ of Sam, as if Sam were someone he had a right to be proud of, and naming the feeling scared him to fucking death. “Okay,” he managed.

“You gotta be hurting your shoulder, doing that.”

It took Bucky another second to figure out what Sam meant. When he did, he lowered their joined hands back to the bed, making a show of being careful. “S’okay,” he said. “It doesn’t hurt too much, and I’m—” I like touching you.

He couldn’t say that.

Steve was found now. Bucky hadn’t ever intended to stay awake longer than it took to find Steve, so it wasn’t fair to say _I like touching you_ like he was asking for something else from Sam beyond this one moment.

“It’s okay,” he said, instead.

* * *

Steve opened his eyes. He was tired of opening his eyes, and he felt fuzzy and loopy. They had sent him to Tony. He couldn’t remember this, exactly, this moment, lying in bed, both of Tony’s hands wrapped around one of his, but he was glad they’d found it. He wouldn’t tell them about it, the scientists. How peaceful he had felt. “Hi,” he whispered.

Tony smiled at him. “Hey, soldier.”

“Can’t stay,” Steve explained. (It was important to tell that, so Tony wouldn’t be surprised when he disappeared.) “They snap me back.”

“No, that’s not— You’re out, okay? We got you out. You’re home. I mean, not home home but—”

“Tower?”

“The—yeah. Yes. You’re at the Tower.” There was a catch in Tony’s voice.

“They snap me back,” Steve said. Hadn’t there been something else? Very important. He had thought of it, before, but his mind was so cloudy now.

Tony smoothed a hand over Steve’s forehead, tender. “They can’t snap you back anymore. You’re home. I’ve got you. Go to sleep, I’ve got you.”

He knew it couldn’t last, this respite, but he let himself sink into it anyway.

* * *

His head was clearer when he woke up again, and he remembered that they had come for him. Of course, his memories were not reliable. He turned his head, and there was Tony, curled up fast asleep on the other side of the bed. Their fingers were intertwined, and they weren’t touching anywhere else.

Carefully—Tony’s eyes were shadowed, dark with weariness, and Steve didn’t want to wake him—he rolled onto his side, closer to Tony, touching their foreheads together.

“Sir,” said Friday’s voice. “Captain Rogers is—”

Steve jumped, smacking his skull hard into Tony’s.

“—awake,” Friday finished, as Steve tried to pull away, and Tony sat up and twisted sideways at the same time so their heads collided again.

“Ow,” Tony wailed.

“Ow,” Steve agreed, recovering enough to sit up properly.

Tony was looking at him like he was a miracle. “You’re awake.”

“You too,” said Steve stupidly. “Are Bucky and Sam—”

“Good, yeah, they’re fine, probably fucking each other into oblivion as we speak, how are you feeling?”

Steve raised his eyebrows. “Probably—sorry, what?”

“Oh.” Tony put a hand over his mouth. “Shit, you didn’t— Shit. I mean. Look, if you and Bucky—I don’t think it’s anything. Uh. They’ll stop if, you and Bucky obviously are the, whatever, each other’s end game, and Sam gets that, I mean, Sam probably gets that, and _I_ get it, so I’m not going to be—a problem or whatever, I just slept in here to make sure—”

“Quit it,” Steve said. His head hurt.

Tony snapped his mouth shut. His eyes were very wide, and they were sitting close enough and the light from the windows was bright enough that Steve could see himself reflected in them.

All the things that Steve had wanted to say to Tony, when he was kidnapped and gone and unsure if they’d ever even see each other again. Dick jokes and compliments and requests for advice and gallows humor. All those things, and he couldn’t remember any of them now. But they had all been one thing, really, so that was what Steve said: “I love you.”

Tony’s lips parted, but he didn’t answer, just watched Steve as if he were waiting for the punchline.

“I’m in love with you is the thing. And, and I’m not asking you for anything. I know it doesn’t fix what happened. Just—I thought I might die, and I hadn’t told you, and I died without telling Peggy and it was so goddamn stupid. So. That’s. I love you. You don’t have to do anything about it but I wanted you to know. That’s all. Okay.”

He was a little out of breath.

Tony said, “You love him,” and he was barely, barely holding himself still. Steve could see the tension in his shoulders and neck and hips, the way he was poised for flight.

“That isn’t what he is to me,” Steve said. He felt almost unbearably relieved, admitting to it, finally, _finally_ being able to say it, because Bucky was not dead and was not being tortured and didn’t want him either. And he could finally admit it, the truth, he could say it out loud: “We haven’t wanted each other like that since the serum.”

“Okay,” said Tony, carefully.

“Like I said,” said Steve, “I’m not asking you for anything. I—”

“Shut up.”

Ouch. Steve nodded. He wished he could be somewhere else, for a minute, to collect himself and give Tony time to do the same, but he didn’t trust his legs to hold him up. Across the bed, Tony shifted and came—to Steve’s utter bewilderment—crawling into Steve’s space, curling himself up against Steve’s chest, and he said, “I need a fucking hug.”

Steve braced his knees in the sheets so he wouldn’t topple them over and wrapped his arms around Tony as tight as he could. Tony’s cheek rested on his shoulder, and he buried his face against the warm, prickly nape of Tony’s neck. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Shut up,” said Tony again, his fingers twisting into the fabric of Steve’s shirt. “Shut up shut up. Don’t—don’t— God, don’t say it like there was any other— Of course I fucking— Anyway, it was Sam and Bucky. I was just their ride.”

“I already sent them thank-you notes,” Steve said, because he knew damn well by now that you couldn’t get Tony to take credit for anything he didn’t want to. “I left them outside their door with a bottle of cherry-flavored lube.”

Tony started shaking with laughter, his lips and beard buzzing lightly against Steve’s collarbone.

“And some anal beads.”

He loved Tony’s laugh.

* * *

Bucky had forgotten about the arm. Somehow, he’d forgotten the most important thing. The man who came in to do what they called OT said it was going to be at least four months, probably more like six, before they could start prosthesis control training, which involved—Bucky made him say it twice because he couldn’t fucking believe it—picking up blocks and moving them.

“That’s gonna take six months,” Bucky said. “For me to be able to pick shit up.”

“Yep,” said the OT man, whose name was Kevin and who Bucky hated. “Did the doctor not go over it with you?”

He complained about it to Sam later, and Sam rolled his eyes. “Man, I was sitting right there when the doctor went over that shit with you. How are you not going to listen to the man telling you what’s going to happen to your _own arm,_ huh?”

“This from the guy who spent all his credit cards.”

Sam nudged Bucky with his elbow playfully. “Like you know anything about credit cards.”

“Like you know anything about rehab.” Bucky swallowed hard. “So, uh. But. I’ll, I’ll be around, you know? For a while. I, uh, I gotta keep a low profile while Steve and Tony figure out the legal stuff, but I—you know. I’ll be here.”

“Okay,” said Sam.

(He never asked anything from Bucky.)

“I like you,” Bucky said. He made himself meet Sam’s eyes, warm brown eyes, that Bucky had seen fill up with tears, and Sam had let him see. “And I’m not, you know, going back down until—it’s gotta be at least six months while they figure out my arm. So. If you’d want to, if—I, we, could take it slow, so you could know that I, you know, was consenting. If you want.”

He ground to a stop and found that Sam’s eyes had slid away. Oh.

Sam took his hand, and Bucky let him have it. Sam’s fingers were warm and calloused. Gentle as he ever was, Sam said, “Six months isn’t— Okay, look, I like you too. Like I said. And I would want to give it a try, Buck, I would.”

_Would_ was not _do._ Bucky said, “But?”

“I’m not trying to be another person telling you what to do, how to live your life. I just—I can’t have you like this—” Sam put his free hand against Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky turned into the touch, his lips against Sam’s palm. “—and watch you go back down in six months. I’m not going to do that to myself. It took me too long to get where I’m at. I can’t go back down that road, you understand?”

Breathing deep, Bucky tried to. “You would be,” he said, searching for the word. “Sad.”

Sam nodded. Bucky nodded back, for the feel of Sam’s fingers against his face.

“You’d be sad if I went back to sleep in Wakanda.”

“I’d be _too_ sad if you went back into cryo. Yeah.” Sam closed his hand around the back of Bucky’s neck and pulled; Bucky let himself be swayed forward.

Unable to help himself, Bucky kissed Sam’s mouth, licked at his bottom lip before letting him go. “I’m scared to—” He inhaled sharply. “Promise to stay awake, I’m scared to do that.”

“Okay,” said Sam slowly. It was hurting him to talk like this, to be kissed. Bucky was getting better at spotting it in him, or Sam wasn’t trying as hard to hide. “So then it could be one of those times, you know? Where we both care about each other and we want it to give it a try, but there’s other stuff that makes it not a good idea. Right?”

Bucky nodded, and nodded, and nodded. “If I could try,” he said. “Would that be okay. If I said, if I could promise to try. Six months, and then—and then another six months, and— Would that be okay?”

Their faces were close, and it made Bucky think of the times he had held Sam, at night, held him until he fell asleep. The warmth of him, the smell of his skin. How good Sam was to him, how good Sam _was,_ and he had chosen, still, to care about Bucky.

_I’ll do anything,_ he thought.

Sam was thinking.

_Anything,_ thought Bucky, _I’ll give you anything,_ but Sam was not Steve. He didn’t want grand promises, end-of-the-line promises; he wanted what he gave, honesty clear and cold as water. So Bucky kept his mouth shut, and waited.

An eternity passed, and another.

Sam said, shaky, “Okay.”

Bucky kissed him before Sam could say anything else, pushed him back against the wall next to the open door and pinned him there. He loved, he fucking loved the way Sam kissed him, his thumb against Bucky’s cheekbone and his mouth open for it. The way Sam licked back into him, then let his mouth go to nuzzle against Bucky’s cheek and jaw.

“Okay,” Sam whispered again, curling himself closer.

He’s scared, thought Bucky, with shocking clarity. “You don’t get rid of me that easy, baby doll.”

Sam snorted and tilted his head back against the wall, trying for a smile. “That right?”

“Yeah,” said Bucky, “yeah, that’s right,” and it was real fucking sappy but still it was true that this, the arm, Steve safe and sound, Sam Wilson letting Bucky hold him (wanting Bucky to hold him) felt like—

It felt—fragile, fragile—like the start of something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS WAS SO HARD TO WRITE ugh this is a million words long and now I am tired but your comments and niceness have given me life <3
> 
> time permitting, I'm prrrrrrrobably going to do a small linked story where Tony deals with the aftermath of all this time machine business and maybe bangs Steve a little bit. hopefully within the next few months.


End file.
